This latest addition of insult to social injury was tucked within a last-minute avalanche of bills that were passed at lightning speed during the tail-end of the last legislative assemblage – 47 bills in under 3 hours – surely one for the Guinness Book of Records. An accident? Or by design? This bill, subjected to wrong arguments, merely consolidates the reduction of female minors to sex objects. As long as you can afford a bag of rice or – as in the case of cross-border tastes such as Ahmed Yerima’s – ten thousand dollars, you are free to rape a child to death. This, surely cannot pretend to represent the will of a people who care. Once you re-define female adulthood as marital status, all subsequent protection bills for the girl-child are worthless, cynical.

Neither culture nor religion is at issue here. It is, quite starkly, an issue of science, the science of the human body, one that demonstrably instructs us when the female human body is still at risk from conjugal rites. We should therefore call upon the Medical Association to take the lead on this, a human issue that affects all men and women of conscience. A nation should not be founded on the sexual exploitation of the fragile, and innocent. The debate must remain open.

President Buhari – and here I make my first imposition on his presidency – should never place his assent on such a nefarious distraction. Its implications doom the victim to afflictions that churn the stomach even to think of the human toll. Perhaps those legislators think that vaginal fistula is something thought up arm-chair critics with nothing better to occupy their minds. No matter, let those who profess a genuine concern declare their stand on this. On my part, I find unacceptable any effort to build a nation on perversions that merely minister to man’s sexual appetites. This is a sordid appeasement of a minority who actually require psychiatric help. President Buhari should not give his assent to the Bill without amendments that address the earlier Yerima gift to the nation. It’s a trap!

Let us learn from the heroes of June 12. Few people have done more for the cause of liberation than the Hero of this day. M.K.O Abiolawas an open polygamist. None of his wives was ever found to be below the only age of consent that is now needlessly under contention – the scientific. We cannot substitute science and observation for any spurious alibis that sacrifice the child to private lust!

The debate must remain open until resolved in favour of the child.”