Peter Anosike
A non-profit organisation, Women of Integrity, Strategy and Excellence International, aka BE WISE has advocated death sentence for rapists.
Speaking while reacting to the rape and gruesome murder of Barakat Bello in Ibadan and many other victims of rape, the founder /president of the group, Chinyere Maduka-Onwu, a lawyer, said that making rape a death sentence is the only way to deter people from committing the heinous crime.
According to her, if capital punishment is being meted out to the perpetrators, it would go a very long way in deterring others who see girls and women as sex toys that they could use and discard at will.
She said that one of the reasons rapists escape justice is because the entire prosecution system is male-dominated and as such it doesn’t understand the level of devastation and dehumanisation that victims of rape go through.
Furthermore, she said that the justice system needs serious overhauling in order to make it difficult for rapists to evade justice.
The human right activist said that Section 358 of the Criminal Code stated unequivocally that a person who commits rape is liable to imprisonment for life, with or without caning.
However, she said that over the years, the full weight of the law had not been applied in rape cases and because of that the crime had become a recurring trend in the society.