Legalise Prostitution to Check Rape

Presently, Kano State is the centre of high drama with respect to haute religiosity, specifically the implementations of the codices of the Sharia legal system.

Expectantly, in these modern time and days, there have been widespread backlash and rage against the judgements and punishments meted out by this Sharia jurisprudence, even, rather surprisingly, from those with typical “Muslim names” (what we can conclude at the present time is that not all those with traditional Muslim names are actually adherents of Islam and the fallouts from these Sharia pronouncements will serve the purpose of alienating folks further out).

Times are truly changing. A double-release pronouncement by the Sharia court jurisdiction in Kano sentencing a young man to death for “blasphemy” (I choose to put the word blasphemy in quote because I understand and I hold that desecrating a divine entity is blasphemy and any entity that does not lay claim to a divine nature but is principally identified as “human” or “mortal” cannot be blasphemed against otherwise the implication of holding on to this “blasphemy” point-of-view has the net result of re-writing the storyline of an established creed) and an older man to death by stoning for rape is making us wonder if Al Qaeda is already established in Kano State.

Why this sudden pro-Sharia jingoism that has left social activists wondering out aloud what is the fate of that “big man” who was captured on camera stuffing bribe-dollars into the pockets of his oversized gown? On the rape issue, I want to posit that to stem the incidences of rape in our communities our federal, state, and local government structures should consider legalising prostitution and concomitantly impose a severe deterrence for rape (zillion-years imprisonment or even life without parole for brutal cases of rape but surely not death by stoning, come on).
Just check this fact out: communities where prostitution is legalised and where this business thrives without a social-taboo attachment, like my native Idoma culture, hardly experience cases of rape.

I have read newspapers in and out and I have yet to come across a story reporting a rape incidence in Otukpo, the principal town of the Idoma-speaking people of Benue State. That is a plus for my folks. Actually, the unwritten “big boy” rule in Idomaland is a preference for paid sex sessions with prostitutes instead of getting entangled in rape and adultery. That is something Nigerians should think about.

––Sunday Adole Jonah, Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State