A new law punishing child rapists with castration and death has come into force in a Nigerian state.
Many Nigerians clamouring for action in the face of a countrywide rape crisis have greeted the new law enthusiastically, but critics say it is a populist move incompatible with the country’s Constitution.
The Kaduna state government is the only one in the West African country to adopt such harsh punishment for rape, but castration has been tried elsewhere.
In Nigeria, the minister for women’s affairs said last December that two million women and girls were raped in the country each year.
In recent years, Nigerian women have increasingly been coming forward with accusations of rape.
“The truth is, the pain of women and girls — including the kind of pain caused by sexual violence — simply isn’t a big deal in Nigeria,” OluTimehin Adegbeye, a Nigerian writer, lamented in a recent Op-Ed article in The New York Times.
Recent Comments