This must be the most outrageous report to have come out of our Seat of the Caliphate in recent times. At least according to me. In last Thursday’s edition of this paper, a news story was promoted on the cover, which said “Man bags five years for sodomising minors.” Even from this end it was a shocking sentence. But moving into page six where the story is situated, guaranteed the reader additional heartache.
In the full story we’ll learn that the man has been in the business of sodomising unsuspecting boys for two years before luck ran out on him and one of his victims gathered enough courage to tell his father.
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By now he had raped 18 boys, most of them belonging to the family which gave him shelter.
Yet, despite confessing to this monstrous crime, the judge could find no better judgement than to sentence Lawali Bala to five years in prison or the option of N50,000 fine.
In a country whose legislature had criminalised same-sex relationships, it is shocking that Lawali got away with this slap on the wrist. For one, the punishment prescribed by our last legislature was 14 years for an openly gay relationship. Additionally Lawali’s partners were rape victims because their relationship was by no way consensual. And finally being underaged minors means Lawali was a paedophile.
Now with these three-count charges of sexual assault, how did this Sokoto judge come up with such a light sentence? How can a man who betrayed his kind host by engaging in dirty and unnatural intercourse with his children end up going virtually scot-free?
I mean the option of paying fifty thousand naira is very much like going scot-free. What would it take for Lawali to raise this amount of money, if he is really serious about liberating himself? Why couldn’t the judge make it at least five million naira, so that this dirty, rotten man will have no choice but to live in prison?
Why is there an obvious effort to spare this criminal of a punishment he rightfully deserves? And it’s not even the first time a paedophile seems set to escape justice, after defiling young children and ruining their lives.
Early last year, three Zaria husbands escaped with a light prison sentence and the option of eight thousand naira each, for repeatedly waylaying two teenage girls and raping them, on their way to school for several mornings.
In Katsina, some young men who abducted three teenage school girls and turned them into sex slaves were given another outrageously light sentence, by the female judge who presided over the case, for reasons best known to her.
This is truly unfortunate and an obvious denial of justice for the poor girls who have been marked for life. Paedophiles everywhere in the world are despicable human beings. And whether their victims are male or female, they deserve the maximum penalty the state can offer.
Though Sokoto is not a Sharia state, where Lawali Bala would have been sentenced to death by stoning, he nevertheless deserves a hard punishment that could deter him and others from going back to sodomising young boys and ruining their future.
The first step I’m calling for, is for the state ministry of youths and social welfare, to appeal this kid gloves judgement and make sure that Lawali remains in prison long enough to wean himself of his homosexual tendencies. Letting him off with the present sentence means the state does not care what threat he represents to young boys in future.
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