Not that long ago, a 30-year-old Naija man (who apparently has a baby) was arrested in the UK for sexting a minor. He was aware of her age, but he went ahead and sent her explicit texts and photos, asking for sex and nude photographs from her. This man had only been in the UK a few months. Comments from fellow Nigerians ranged from sensible condemnation of the man to those who suggested that Naija men who want to misbehave shouldn’t do so abroad. Some joked that his “village people” were after him. It’s crazy that someone is arrested for paedophilia and some folks think that his error was in “behaving abroad like he would in Nigeria,” because “abroad people no de joke ooo.” Or that it was bad luck that got him caught.
More recently, a woman posted about how she took her 15-year-old to the CBT centre to register for JAMB, using her (the mother’s) own number to set up her teenager’s profile. One of centre’s staff lifted the number from the profile, and thinking it was the teen’s number, started to chat her up. When she responded by saying she was only allowed to chat with her mates from school and asked if he knew her age, he asked her not to let her mother know. And said that yes, he knew she was 15.
Again, as in the case of the man arrested in the UK, there were folks who saw absolutely nothing wrong in a grown man (a 22-year-old) chatting up a minor (a 15-year-old) and encouraging her to keep their chats a secret from her mother. One Naija man even tweeted, “I honestly understand the age difference but biologically if he goes after a 21-year-old it may not end well! His moves are way wrong but then, that boy is a boy who just wants to make friends with a fine girl he saw…”
Where does one start? From the fact that a 22-year-old isn’t a boy but a man? And that a person that age has no business chatting up a child? Or that as the mother correctly notes, that apart from being a paedophile, this man also broke the law in lifting her daughter’s number from a form? His “moves” are not just “way wrong,” they are outright criminal.
Unfortunately, we seem to live by different rules in Naija. Years ago, while I was lodged at a hotel in Lagos, a man I had briefly bumped into in the hotel gym called my room. I hadn’t even given this man my name. The front desk, he said, had given him my room number and name. Front desk seemed to have no idea that they shouldn’t be giving out guest information to any random who asked for it, no matter how nicely the person asked. Or however much they were bribed.
So, that this 22-year-old has folks supporting him shouldn’t surprise me as much as saddens me.
The apparent widespread ignorance of what is permissible and what is not, what is criminal and what is not is alarming. Some adults on Twitter even shared the young girl’s photographs, lifted from her mother’s page. His point being that she was dressed “indecently” in the pictures and so no one could have guessed she was a child. SMH.
In any case, am happy that the teenager’s mother followed up on this incident, and that the 22-year-old has been arrested. I hope he is made an example of. I want him punished severely for both his pedophilic tendencies and for abusing his access to information that ought to be confidential. Even if the girl were not a child, she didn’t consent to him having her phone number. I hope the man who shared the girl’s photographs also gets what is coming to him.
We cannot have people just flouting rules anyhow, committing crimes and getting away with it. Folks have got to learn one way or another to behave themselves. And they’ve got to learn that paedophilia is no laughing matter. If education won’t lead the change, let punishment do it.
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