Legislators in Kaduna State, Nigeria, have approved surgical castration as a punishment for those convicted of raping children under the age of 14.
State Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai is expected to sign the bill into law in Northwestern State. He has already supported castration to prevent rapists from reoffending.
The decision follows public outrage over a wave of rapes, which prompted state governors to declare a state of emergency.
Nigeria’s federal law provides for a sentence ranging from 14 years to life imprisonment, but state legislators can set different rules for convictions.
Stigma often prevents victims from reporting cases of rape in Nigeria, and the number of successful prosecutions remains low.
Since 2015, when a new law was introduced, about 40 rape suspects have been charged in a country of some 200 million people, according to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (Naptip), which has a list of sex offenders on its website.
The new law broadened the scope of criminalization of sexual offenses in Nigeria and removed the two-month period during which rape cases had to be tried before they could be heard in court.
The agency’s director, Julie Okah-Donli, told the BBC that the burden of proof on the prosecution to prove rape cases is “quite tedious and technical”.
This will deter rapists
Surgical castration of convicted rapists has been considered in Nigeria for some time, especially as the number of cases has increased during the recent coronavirus containment.
There was widespread outrage in July after the murder of a 22-year-old student who, according to her family, was brutally raped and bludgeoned to death.
This is one of many shocking cases that in one week resulted in street protests, an online petition signed by thousands of people, and a Twitter hashtag #WeAreTired.
Many Nigerians called for tougher laws, such as the death penalty.
“If the governor of Kaduna signs this law, the next rapist arrested in Kaduna could be the first to be castrated under this new law,” he said.
Dorothy Njemanze, a former victim, welcomed the bill and said she would like to see it passed in other Nigerian states.
“In retrospect, if all the people who raped me had undergone this surgical castration, other people they might have raped would have been spared,” she said.
Surgical castration is not widely practiced around the world and is considered controversial in the few places where it is still used.
It is not included in the guidelines developed by the International Association for the Treatment of Sex Offenders (IATSO) and critics say the physical effects are irreversible and can have serious physical and mental consequences.
Source: BBC
