By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
One of the landmark bills the Seventh Senate passed was the Sexual Offences Bill sponsored by Senator Chris Anyanwu. The bill seeks to protect people of different categories, minors, teenagers, the aged and people with disability from being sexually assaulted. But there has been a misconception in some quarters that the bill tried to encourage defilement of minors. In this interview, Senator Anyanwu says she was misquoted and puts everything in its right perspective while hoping that the President assents for the bill to become law. Excerpts
The Sexual Offences Bill has recently generated a lot of controversy, can you throw more light on what it is all about?
The Sexual Offenses Bill is one that has gone on a very long journey. It started in the 6th Senate, where half way, I did not go the whole hug and when I was re-elected in the 7th Senate, it was the first thing that I brought before the Senate. In fact, it was in 2011 that we did the first reading while the second reading was in 2012 and it has been sitting there ever since.
But it went through a very thorough process and scrutiny because it went through a public hearing that was well attended by judges, Attorney-Generals from the states of the federation, Attorney-General of the federation office, the judiciary and all interest groups. This law was the result of three weeks of intensive work by about 20 young lawyers. They camped at the Law School in Abuja where they did the research and produced this document.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe, had some consultants who scrutinised this Bill. The arguments were made and there was nobody that was against the bill during the public hearing. Judges told us about their experiences, the kind of nightmarish stories they hear from victims and wanted the laws updated. In the Senate itself, on the two occasions we had debates on the bill, there was 100 per cent approval.
Chris Anyanwu
There was nobody from the north, south, Christian or Muslim that was against the law. The only thing that they talked about was jurisdiction, which was the reason the law was passed in Abuja and to be adopted by all the states of the federation, bearing in mind their peculiar differences.
When you now say that this law, which was primarily meant to protect children, adults, old people or those with disabilities, will turn against the people it is meant to protect, then, you should know that there is a problem somewhere.
There is a lot happening in this country and I do not need to tell anybody living in Nigeria what is going on because we read them every day in the papers. I cannot recall any day that I picked up a paper in the past three years that I have not seen a horrible crime story relating to sexual offence. The one that threw me off balance was the story of a girl who was raped to death and then, set ablaze recently.
This law became imperative because while we have a lot of laws covering different aspects of sexual offences, many of them were outdated, many were carried over from the colonial government. Imagine laws of 1948 and 1958 still being applied up till now. The result is that if somebody commits a crime , the punishment is like a slap in the wrist.
If you penalise someone by asking him to pay N5,000 for raping a three-year old child, of course, before you bite your eyes, he has committed a more heinous crime ten times over. We have laws but they have encouraged crimes more than deterred them.
I think it was a mixture of mischief and ignorance and could be a case of someone who did not know how to read legal documents. Many people, including those that work at the National Assembly may not have been preview to the documents and the way they are set out in the second reading and the third reading which is a general debate. Third reading is the real law making process where you take it clause by clause and when you read it, if you are not very familiar with it, you can make a serious mistake.
WHAT THE LAW SAYS
In the third reading document, there is a column for clauses, for the provisions of the bill – what was initially proposed, a column for what the committee recommends and then, the remarks. If you change what was proposed and you say what you want, you will state the reason you change it. My thinking is that someone who was not familiar with the document came to clause six. The opening paragraph reads in Clause Six:
Sub-section One: The person who commits an act that causes penetration with a child is guilty of an offense called Defilement. That is the definition of defilement. The punishments are:
Sub-section Two: A person who commits an offense of Defilement with a child age 11 years or less shall upon conviction be sentenced to imprisonment for life –
Sub-section Three: A person who commits an offense of Defilement with a child between ages of 12 and 15 is liable upon conviction to imprisonment for life.
Sub-section Four: A person who commits an offense of Defilement with a child between the ages of 16 and 18 years of age is liable upon conviction to imprisonment for life.
What the committee handling the bill said was that the punishment is the same – life imprisonment and as such, there was no need to stagger the ages because whether it is zero to 11 or 18, the punishment is for life. Therefore, you need just one sentence covering all the ages and when they lifted the first one, which deals with 11 years or less, they did it to cover the whole and we found out that if you leave it as “ a person who commits an offence of Defilement with a child of 11 years or less shall upon conviction, be sentenced to imprisonment for life”, it would be as if you are approving going to bed with children, 11 years.
That was the reason, if you look at the line across that sentence – that is the law making process, what you do not like, you rule it out and we have ruled it out. Then, they stated clearly that sub-sections three and four were deleted because the punishment is the same irrespective of age difference.
So, somebody looked at it, saw that it was ruled out and still went out to say I encourage defilement of minors, is it not a mischief? What was ruled out was “with a child age 11 years or less. Automatically, what is then approved in the Votes and Proceedings for that day is the definition of Defilement and then, “the person who commits an offence of defilement shall upon conviction be sentenced to imprisonment for life”.
We have to know what we are doing in this country because people have the predisposition to condemn and attack anybody that is doing anything good. Nobody can do right in this society and if we continue this way, we will be killing the spirit of those who want to do good. After all, I would have gone through those eight years without proposing a bill. There were people who did that because the law-making process is so slow and the time is so short. About 591 bills were proposed by Senators in the last Senate but only 123 were passed.
So, there are so many proposals struggling for space and when some people look at it, they do not even want to try because there is too much hassle. Yet, those of us who pleaded, lobbied, spent money and energy and pushed until the end are rather attacked than appreciated. I said, ‘please, do not leave me empty handed, let us not have this kind of world, where parents cannot leave home because they are afraid that something might happen to their children; they are afraid the teachers might abuse them, that pastors and Imams may abuse them or that Professors would go after them if they go to the university’.
Even in politics; there is no where to hide. The only deterrent is a very strong and stringent law that curtails those conducts and this bill is a revolutionary bill.
There is no aspect of sexual offence that it does not cover. It updates those colonial laws that are still applicable in our society today and brings them up to international practices . It also deals with crimes that are not already in Nigeria but which we know that because Nigeria is well hooked to the international high way, World Wide Webb, those crimes will eventually come here.
Is there any guarantee that President Buhari will sign the bill into law?
President Muhammadu Buhari is a good and very experienced man. He knows about the private cries of men and women in their homes. Anybody whose child has been abused is ashamed to speak out it because of the social stigma that it attracts. This law aims at covering people so that if one is a victim, the identity can be covered and investigation done privately. Even the trial can be done in the office of the judge and the people standing as witnesses are protected so that people can speak out and crimes punished without the dignity and names of people being tarnished.
Mr. President knows that insanity has gone beyond belief and that there is need to have a firm hold on our society, otherwise, this place will be too hostile to live in. So, I have the belief that if the President understands the full import of this bill, he will be very happy and welcome it.
How effective can the enforcement be if signed into law?
Implementation has always been a problem but part of this law is suggesting that the Police should set up a special Corps that is specially trained to investigate these matters. Part of the problems is that when people know and report these cases, the kind of outrage and treatment they get from the Police make them want to commit suicide and it does not help.
Therefore, if we are going to have people actually come clean and report cases such as this, the Police must have trained Corps set up to handle sexual offences and there are lots of agencies willing and ready to offer special training to the Police if they want. It is not every Policeman carrying a gone that should be brought into sexual offence case. It is a very sensitive matter and should be handled by people who are trained and are sensitive enough to understand what it is about. And we will not have the case of attorney general coming in and instructing that the case be stopped.
The law gives the power to Police and as such, the Police have to put their house in order and I think it will not be too much to hire people with such background to help implement this, otherwise, all of us would be affected including the Police. A crucial part of the bill also is that when people have been established as dangerous sex offenders and they have been convicted, their names will go into a national data bank of dangerous sexual offenders so that when they are looking for jobs, they cannot be allowed to have teaching jobs where they deal with children.
It appears that the bill gives the Nigerian Police the whole powers to implement, how will they be checkmated to avoid abuse of office?
They will not have the full right to deal with sexual offences. It is just that they are the central agency involved in it. I am sure that eventually, the Minister will work out a mechanism involving social welfare officers or another body for it. Those are administrative things that the Minister in this area will have to work out.
Did you also make provision on its domestication in the 36 States of the Federation?
I will want to say that if nobody wants to do the advocacy, I would be ready to carry on. I will visit the state assemblies, state governors and first ladies. I will even start with the current national first lady and encourage her to adopt it as one of the plans for the change they want to bring about because it is change that touches everybody in this society.
If we have such high profile people adopting and pushing it, I have no fear that other states will domesticate it. Lagos State has something similar but it is not as comprehensive as this. This is the first time we are having all sexual offences related law aggregated in one place.
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