Hiv-positive Men Would Be Cured When They Raped Young Girls

Nigerian men rape underage girls in hope of HIV cure
By Our correspondent
Published: Saturday, 5 Jan 2008
A common social problem in South Africa, the rape of underaged females by HIV-positive men seeking a cure may have spread to Nigeria.

IRIN News Agency and Agence France Presse reported on Thursday that the police and government officials in Kano had reported an upsurge in incidents of child rape. They said that as a result of the trend, which has been a major challenge for South Africa, young girls had become unsafe in Kano.

An Islamic scholar in Kano, Aminuddeen Abubakar, told AFP that the upsurge was caused by the belief that HIV-positive men would be cured when they raped young girls. “Some (men) have this superstitious belief that they can cure themselves of (sexually transmitted diseases) particularly HIV/AIDS, (through rape). Others believe that they can become rich if they commit this wanton act of irresponsibility,” he said.

However, health experts have pointed out that this odious practice is borne out of ignorance and that HIV/AIDS remains medically incurable.

The scholar stated that “the most vulnerable victims of this inhuman act are girls that hawk articles on the streets and alleys of this city. These girls are lured by rapists who pretend they want to buy their wares.” Abubakar lamented that the strict penalties in the Sharia Law introduced in 2001 by the state government had done little to solve the problem.

“I know of a particular case in which the victim was raped to death,” he told AFP.

The suspects are usually males between the ages of 45 and 70 while their victims are mostly girls of between three and 11 years.

Several parents told IRIN that they now ensured that their daughters were always accompanied when they go out. “The situation has become so bad that you have to monitor every movement of your daughter. You need to warn her not to get close to a strange face and to run home if she is beckoned at,” a housewife, Hadiza Kabir, said.

Confirming the alarming situation, the state’s Deputy Commissioner of Police, Suleiman Abba, told IRIN on Thursday that in one incident, a 70-year-old man raped a three year old girl. He said, “Child rape is becoming rampant in Kano and we are worried that if nothing is done to stop the problem, it will go out of hand.” Abba, who said the police had recorded 54 cases of child rape and made 60-related arrests in the last six months, added that “in some cases, the victims are gang-raped.” The number of cases is two-thirds higher that the number recorded in the first six months of 2007, he said.

Kano’s Sharia Law prescribes the death penalty for rape, but Aminuddeen Abubakar, an Islamic scholar in Kano, said the penalties had done little to solve the problem.

Speaking further, Abba said, “We have cases of young men raping minors but the number pales by comparison to the rape cases involving older men.” He added that the number of reported cases was only a tip of the iceberg. “Many are never reported because parents will want to save the honour of their daughters and protect their families from embarrassment,” he said. Abba said the police began to notice an increase in child rape in 2004, adding that it became pronounced in 2005 and then reached an alarming rate in 2007.However, the police said there were major hurdles to prosecuting suspects. Even where there was enough evidence for a conviction, Abba said social stigma preventedmany parents from pressing charges. “We can’t prosecute without witnesses. (So) the case is dead and you have to let the suspect free,” he said.

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this is madness.