Love, Respect and Protect Our Girls and Women

Photo Credit: Wolfgangsvault.Com

Yesterday December 1, was the World AIDS Day, and I saw some women from a local NGO distributing condoms gratis at the popular Morocco Bus Stop in Shomolu, Lagos. I remembered how I coordinated the World AIDS Day for 250 NGOs in Nigeria in 1993.

The news report of over 1, 3000 girls and women raped in seven months in the Delta state of South-south region of Nigeria is an indication of the failure of the Nigerian government in addressing the prevalence of sex abuse in Nigeria and sexual harassment of innocent girls and women is still common in Nigeria. Rapists have been released without prosecution and their wounded victims left to live with the stigma and trauma of the scars of rape.

Distributing free condoms on the street is not the solution to the problem of unsafe sex and not the best method for the control and prevention of HIV/AIDS. We have to address the dangerous trend of the popularity of pornographic music and movies in Nigeria. The National Broadcasting Commission has lost control of the airwaves and TV screens as desperate callous and unscrupulous music and movie producers, directors and artistes are using their psychedelic music and pornographic videos to corrupt the impressionable minds of the millions of vulnerable girls and boys in Nigeria. The sexploitation of innocent girls and boys is promoting promiscuity and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

We must stop the sexploitation of our girls and boys if we want to save their generation from the plague of HIV/AIDS.

We must love, respect and protect our vulnerable girls and women lest they become corrupt and lost in the wilderness of lust.