Earlier this year, an investigative journalism carried out by Nigeria's national radio network and aired on the network service exposed the dastardly act of some soldiers in Abuja who allegedly sexually assaulted women who were randomly arrested in the city. Their only crime was that they were women seen on the street at night and that automatically classified them as "harlots" in the eyes of men who abused their position of barrel "power". The soldiers, with their police collaborators, constituted themselves into absolute authority of law enforcer, prosecutor, judge and executioner and the result was alleged rape of these hapless women by these soldiers. The repeated violation continued despite pleas and cries from these women some of whom were married, pregnant and in different health conditions.
The military authority has taken some action in dismissing some of the soldiers implicated in this saga but the main issue is largely unaddressed.
How could women, men or children who are sexually violated be managed appropriately with due care to all aspects of medico-legal issues involved?
There is presently no system at the national, state or local council levels in Nigeria for attending to survivors of sexual violence.
Post traumatic syndrome in survivors of sexual violence is well documented and the huge negative impact on the individuals involved, their families and loved one, and on the overall health of the nation is evident.
Some African countries have instituted a system of care, and South Africa in particular has a "one stop centre" for care of survivors of sexual violence.
In Nigeria and some other African countries, what are we doing in restoring the dignity of people who have been sexually assaulted?
Our police officers and police stations are not equipped to attend to survivors of sexual violence.
Often survivors are re-victimised when very courageous few dare to report the incident to the authorities at police stations. Many of those cases are causally dismissed by station police officers as "domestic affair". This is a term I'm yet to understand the meaning in the context of sexual assault.
Police officers, usually mired in sexual violence mythology, lack empathy, are untrained in handling sexual violence cases, and lack basic facilities for care.
Our health centres still treat them as regular patients and often look for physical injuries which if they exist are only an extension of psychological wounds they have been afflicted with. Lack of trained forensic medical personnel and lack of appropriate facilities for the care of survivors often result in insensitive approach, loss of evidence, and worsening of the overall state of the survivors.
Existing Social Work at government departments and non-governmental organisation is largely pedantic, and the specific area of Women and Child protection agencies is rudimentary or non-existent in our jurisdictions.
It cannot be for lack of resources that we have failed to protect the vulnerable amongst us. Our priorities must be skewed for some other non-essential endeavours for us to have ignored the care and protection of our most vulnerable population -women and children-in sexual violence.
We must start looking at the personnel issue as much as we consider facilities necessary for rendering appropriate medical care, forensic medical evaluation, preservation of evidence and providing necessary collaboration with the police and justice system for prosecution of perpetrators.
It's time we took action on this and our professional skills must be matched with appropriate advocacy.
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