BY NIGERIAN AUTHOR AMARA CHIDINMA EZEDINIRU

Here in Nigeria, the lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic has unleashed a brutal vile against the female gender. As soon as a lockdown was declared, my worry was how we would cope. I knew I would but unsure of my friends, my mothers, my sisters and my daughters. I could cope because I had separated myself. I live in my world.

In my world, I am aware of who I am. I defined my boundaries, I screened and gave conditional entry. An unlawful entrant is kicked out without an appeal. I am the judge and the jury. In this world, I walk on an eggshell. I am meticulous, fastidious, cautious, scrupulous, conscientious, mindful all at once. Every opposite gender is a suspect. Even the shadow of an opposite gender is scary. It’s tough and fun. It’s interesting and exasperating. It’s an adventure and a war. It’s what we had to resort to for self-preservation. My world’s outer-world is ravenous and ravaging. My world is my mind and I live in Nigeria.

While we dealt with hunger which I consider the core effect of the pandemic, mothers panicked, not confident they’d make it out alive. They were locked down with domestic violent husbands. Men who considered themselves demi-gods answerable to none even to the laws of the nation. Laws? Which laws? The laws that those who ought to enforce it are continuously transgressing? The numbers kept rising of women beaten blue-black by their husbands. At the police stations, they were told to go home and make peace because it was a civil matter.

And on our girls? Rapist were on the loose. Their callousness was squared. They tore at anyone without a penis, toddlers, girls, grandmothers. My mind was losing it as I read the news. What comeliness has a child for a penis? Brothers, uncles, fathers, neighbours, strangers, the tiny trust we hung on as we related with each of them is severed. “They are all suspects” I screamed as I groom my daughter, “trust none of them, believe them not, be at alert, run, scream.” It did not matter their profession – police, lawyers, pastors, teachers and what have you. It did not matter their relationship. Their looks are most deceptive. We regarded them the same – dangerous.

How sad!

It is sadder that our boys, our innocent boys are watching. Some have been unknowingly initiated. They are following the paths of the devious adult males in their lives. The others consider it a manly adventure, their brains have been washed!

I’m reminiscing on my bed. I’m tormented even with the fences around me. I’m not a victim, I won’t be but the victims are my daughters, my sisters, my mothers. We are in this together. their victory is mine and in their defeat, we all have a share. What shall we do, castration or death? Jungle justice or legal justice? My mind is going wild.

How shall we rid our nation of this defilement? Our gods are cringing; our ancestors are tossing in their graves. Our shrines have been desecrated, virtue forcefully taken from us. Where shall we run to? Who shall we call? Where will our help come from? Being female should not be this difficult, not in 2020. I am right, right?

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Amara Chidinma Ezediniru is a business administrator, human resource manager and a certified teacher. She is widely traveled, a compassionate Rotarian, an author of three books, and a mother. She is the managing consultant of Rald and Vid Consulting Ltd.