iv) Outlaw all laws, customary and religious practices which violate the rights of citizens.

My first reaction after coming out of the shock was; is this part of the Globalisation agenda surreptitiously finding its way into the Confab?. If Prof. Ogunsola is ignorant of our religion and culture what of his deputy, Prof. Nur Alkali, was he sleeping when this proposal was sneaked in?. What of the other members in the committee, especially the Moslem members, didn’t they wake him up?.

I would begin by taking up the first of the proposals above, the capricious pegging of marriage age at 18.

Clearly this is an affront to African culture and tradition which has proved to be very effective, over time, in stemming quite a number of societal ills. To begin with Islam, which is indisputably a natural religion from God for the guidance of man on earth, is not in agreement with these proposals. Before the almighty God created the Human stock, He first of all decreed the planet earth from among the trillions of heavenly bodies, to be of the right size and clime to contain man. He thereafter adorned the planet with all that is required for the survival and sustenance of the Human creature like Air, Water, Light, Plants and Animals, the hills, the valleys etc. The all-knowing, all-powerful God still did not stop at that, he provided man with a blue print on how to navigate his way through life on earth and in his beneficence and mercy, even sent along technical experts to assist us in decoding and successfully applying the blue prints in our daily activities. This blue print is the Qur’an and the technical experts are the prophets of God who have been appearing to their various peoples periodically from Adam, culminating into the master of them all, the final and the greatest messenger of God; Muhammad (S.A.W). This immaculate human being has been indisputably acknowleged by all as the greatest human being ever. His entire life history has been scrupulously studied and accurately recorded in what has now become a scientific body of knowledge, known as the Hadith. People all over the world, especially the French and the English, have adopted his practices, sayings, counsel and his style of administration as part of their statutes and ethics. The manner he lived his life as an examplar had been adjudged even by his adversaries as the best way a human can live and find the elusive happiness. It is an established Islamic practice the world over to marry out women when they reach physical maturity and it is a well known physiological fact that some women do mature from as early as 9 years. Lady Aisha (R.A), the most beloved wife of the holy prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) was married to him at age 9. The prophet himself gave out his daughters in marriage before they are eighteen. Yet this was over 1400 years ago when human beings are not as robust and immoral as they presently are. This practice was continued by his sahaba (companions) and those following them till date without any problem. Is the committee saying that all these people were fools?. Because of this practice, Islamic countries of Asia and the middle east have been recording the lowest level of promiscuity, divorce, mistresses and single motherhood in sharp contrast with western societies.

One therefore wonders what this committee really intends to achieve by this outrageous, indeed provocative, proposal. If by this myopic law they feel they can stem the rampant cases of Maternal Mortality and VVF, then they have surely missed the road. They should have started their journey for instance, by looking for the real causes of these maladies and not by attacking our time-tested cultural and religious practice. One of the causes is the cumulative effect of the irresponsible and negligent governments this country was unfortunate to have at all levels that do not care for the well-being of its citizens. They neglected health care at all levels so much so that principal reasons for coup-making became the lack of facilities at the hospitals. Let them go and read the research work on Maternal Mortality conducted by some medical experts recently under the auspices of Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. None of the reasons given had to do with early marriage. The recent story carried by the Daily Trust in which the first northern woman medical doctor was reported to have used her money on several occasions while traveling to Europe, to buy essential medical supplies as miscellaneous as cotton wool in order to facilitate her work at a big municipal hospital owned by the government!. The lady was so frustrated at the end she had to leave the country to cool down before coming back later to set up her own clinic. Many have left the shores of this country never to come back again. To make matters worse, the same leaders, in order to demonstrate to fellow Nigerians and the world at large that they don’t have confidence in the country’s health care system, scurry abroad for medical treatment of even common illnesses that can be handle by the country’s health personnel. Yet this is a country that has among the best doctors in the world. This clearly demonstrates our insensitivity to our overall well being as nation. Time and space cannot allow me to tell all with respect to our pathetic healthcare story which can fill the entire paper.

I really can’t imagine what our policy makers have inside their skulls in place of brain matter and the object contained within their bosoms in place of a heart that instead of being much more proactive by proposing laws that will build on our cultural and religious advantages, they would waste time and precious resources on those that are repugnant to our culture and religion. For instance instead of proposing laws that will make it a right of every woman of child bearing age in this country to receive free and compulsory ante-natal care and counseling during and before pregnancy(after marriage), the committee chose the simplistic route of importing other peoples cultures. What they proposed is akin to throwing the baby along with the birth water!. This is because they did not weight carefully, and at the end make a choice between the rising cases of teenage promiscuity, pregnancy and abortion in our society, which in itself is a manifestation of increasing influence of western culture, and the alternative, time-tested simple solution provided by our elders.

This is the practice of marrying out their daughters as soon as they reach physical maturity. This could be as early as 9 years or as late as 18years. Our forefathers were not foolish by encouraging early marriage. During their time there negligible cases of teenage pregnancy or abortions, neither do they know what we nowadays call VVF. If the committee had done a little more homework they would have found out the methods employed by our elders to makes this possible.

Teenage pregnancy, abortions, VVF and high maternal mortality are recent developments which show up due increasing indifference of our leaders to the well-being of the masses of our people and in preserving and improving our good heritage and their whole-sale romance with western culture. They even learn their style of living either by going to their lands to buid or acquire mansions, or they import the design on their plots in Lagos, Abuja and Portharcourt etc.

Again if by their proposals, the committee members believe they are protecting the child’s right to education, here again they are wrong and are in need of a paradigm shift in order to appreciate what trapped them. How about abolishing the oppressive practice, made part of Secondary School rules in this country, that make it permissible to send away pregnant female students out of school,?. Instead of prematurely curtailing the rights of young married ladies, it would have been far more useful if the committee had proposed laws that will make it a right for all women to continue with their education at all levels irrespective of their marital or pregnancy status, without any form of molestation or discrimination. This single move would have killed several birds with one stone, since marriage in itself, does not prevent women from furthering their education. In fact some women have higher capacity and are more amenable to education when married than otherwise.

On their proposal iii) above, may I ask where this was copied from because it doesn’t sound original. Can anyone honestly compare a western woman with an African woman?. They should have gone all the way by proposing for one man one wife in order to totally deprive us of our culture and traditions!. If Nigerian women like their western counterparts feel they are qualified to compete with men in becoming governors and presidents, then they don’t need reservations, let them slug it out in the open, level playing ground since their counterparts in the west are so equal with their men that they no longer need these protective constitutional provisions. I believe what they have instead in their constitution is sectoral employment reservations to prevent discrimination by employers of labour, not only against women, but non-whites, the disabled and so on. This is where the committee should have directed its attention to rather than try to force women leadership on us. Leaders are better and more acceptable to the masses when they emerge naturally rather than through imposition, that is why we tend to run away from military dictatorships.

The last proposal (iv. above) which I would like to take exception to, is the blanket proposal to delete all laws, cultural and religious practices which violate the rights of citizens. This proposal clearly sounds like it was lifted from the rhetorics of some of the western civil rights movements, who if given the chance would want the committee to include among the citizens, rights that of a child to prosecute his father or teacher for caning!. Clearly this is a lazy and highly presumptuous proposal. To dare delving into this vast region, one would have expected the committee to first of all properly identify the unwanted laws, religious and cultural practices, then categorise them according to the extent of infringement to citizens rights, taking into consideration that some rights are better infringed for the overall good of the society. This would have placed the committee in a position to come up with definite proposals on what laws to delete and what practices to outlaw. This in my opinion, is better approach than the omnibus proposal they came up with, which could be easily manipulated by western apologists, secularists and free thinkers.