Why I want tribal marks banned in Nigeria – Dino Melaye
Senator Dino Melaye has explained why he wants the Senate to criminalize the practice of giving cultural and tribal marks to children in Nigeria
He said such practice brings self-esteem on children who possessed them, and increases the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.
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He said this yesterday while defending, before the Senate, a private member bill titled: ‘A Bill for an Act to provide for the Prohibition of Facial Mutilation’, he personally sponsored.
Melaye said the era where facial marks were needed for identification with certain affiliations were long gone, as the popularity and acceptance of the practice continued to wane.
He said: “These tribal marks have become emblems of disfiguration and have hindered many situations of life. Some have developed low self-esteem, they are most times treated with scorn and ridicule.
“The reactions of people who interact with them on interpersonal basis somehow dampen their spirit or lower their self-esteem. They are reduced in most cases to laughing stocks in the communities and called several horrible names.
“Long before the awareness programmes on AIDS, many innocent people, mostly children, who were subjected to tribal marks laceration, had inadvertently been infected with the deadly HIV virus. Sharp instruments used by the locales to inscribe the tribal marks were not sterilized, thus exposing kids, even adults, to the risk of HIV/ AIDS,” Melaye argued
Contributing to the debate, the Senate Whip, Senator Olusola Adeyeye (Osun Central) said the practice brings reproach to the African race, all around the world.
“We must stop it, and we must ensure stiff penalties, not just for the parents but for the so-called local surgeons who administer the marks. African legislatures must stop it. All African countries must ban this practice in the name of tribal marks,” he said.
Adeyeye displaying the mutilations on his arm, disclosed that he was a victim of the practice, when his grandmother forcefully took him to a local surgeon who made the cuts, while his father was away.
“My father did not want any of us to have marks”, he said, while recalling the pains of being cut with a knife without any form of anaesthesia.
The bill which contains the proposed actions that constitute the offence of facial mutilation, prosecution and punishment of offenders and the protection of victims under threat of facial mutilation and other related matters scaled through second reading on the floor of the Senate.
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