Widow Raped To Death Over A Long Night Over N1,500

This is a reminder of what happened to this widow last week by a concerned Nigerian and a call for Nigerians to wake up..

Just thinking of the horrors this woman endured for an entire night in the hands of this excuse of a man because of this amount makes me so ashamed that the litany of failures of my country led to has enabled this kind of behaviour.

Let me paint the scenario for you once again. There was a story in the news last week that a widow was raped to death over the night by a man somewhere in Ebonyi State. Dear readers, Mrs. Ogodo 34, of Egwudunagu village in Amachi community literally spent her most horrendous, longest and last night in the hands of a senseless, low-level, hideous and heartless male assailant who brutalized her mercilessly throughout the night.

 What was her offence? She owed him 1,500 Naira and could not pay.

Since the story broke, unfortunately, not many Nigerians have been able to keep their level of indignation high enough.

One cannot get over the shock that Nigerians are not screaming blue murder and demanding the swiftest judgment over that reprobate. I am in shock that we all who go by the name Nigerians have failed this soul and are going about our normal business as usual.

Oh yes, we all failed her. To start with, while this woman was going through this atrocious and horrific experience in the hands of her appalling assaulter, most of us were…. asleep, while some were… making money… yeah well, making something anyway. So we’ve got her on our collective conscience as a nation and as individuals, though some more than others.

 The question we should be asking ourselves is what could have brought a widow to the point that she could not offset a debt of N1,500 and had to pay with her life? This is more pathetic when you consider that this is a country where leaders use champagne to brush their teeth and wash down yesterday’s beer and then sniff all kinds of costly things with the money that could have kept this woman alive.

We could start with the fact that she is a widow which means that her husband failed her by dying. That can’t be helped; as they say, when you gotta go, you gotta go. In saner climes, that fact alone normally invites sympathy and offers of help, but not to our assailant. In place of sympathy, he offered brutality. The woman’s own father was also said not to have helped much. As the story went, the woman’s daughter fled to her grandfather that night and told him what was going on in their house but the man did not raise hell or rouse the village to help his daughter.

What about her councilman and LGA chairman? Oh yes, they also failed her. Can you imagine the colossal amount of money that have been released into each LGA in this country but which have not been used to make life a little more comfortable for the people? Perhaps, if those monies had been judiciously used, factories could by now be dotting the landscapes of Nigeria, rural and all, and Mrs. Egede could by now be holding down a job of a sort that would at least pay enough to keep her out of the claws of heartless monsters. So did her federal representatives, senators and entire government failed her.

Please don’t get me wrong. All over the world, people’s wrong choices and bad turns of luck unwittingly place them in the hands of loan sharks, money lenders, blackmailers, pimps, etc., but it is not often that people get this kind of attack for owing N1,500, an amount that is less than $10. So yes, people are being killed daily in the world even for owing less. Yet, just think of the horrors this woman endured for an entire night in the hands of this excuse of a man because of this amount. It makes me so ashamed that the litany of failures of my country led to and enabled this kind of behaviour. These state failures must be addressed because they are killing the citizens.

There are too many examples in Nigerian leadership that are telling the citizens that it is all right Jack; you can take the law into your hands. Just look at your political office holders. It is generally believed that many of them rigged their ways into office and are still using the same mago-mago and wayo-wayo ways to get fixed up into juicy positions. These behaviour patterns kind of tell the general citizens that the means justifies the end and any behaviour that produces desired results is aye o.k.

With that mindset, the country clearly is endangered. We are not preaching morality here. We are rooting for good governance where leaders should know that they are directly and indirectly responsible for the long-term actions of their citizens because they provide the examples to follow. When they fail in their duties, the state fails and the people fall. Mrs. Egede fell because of the failure of her leaders; May her soul rest in peace.

Nigerians, let's root for good leaders and demand accountability from them.

-The Nation