She is the debtor. He is the creditor. That condition already creates a power imbalance. The relationship is asymmetrical. When you consider the gender angle, the woman becomes even more vulnerable, while the man adds “macho” to his name. He becomes a macho man.
I know a macho man is a strong man. But is a macho man inherently a brute? Is he a rapist to be feared by women, ladies, and girls? I am not very sure. I checked my dictionary. It told me a macho man is a hypermasculine, sexually attractive, virile man. This is not inherently negative. It depends on what the hypermasculinity in a macho man pushes him to do.
In the positive sense, and perhaps in the older usage, machismo means a man who is strong, brave, and protective enough to provide for and defend his family. In the negative and mostly modern sense, it means a man who is dominant, aggressive, controlling, unwilling to show weakness, and overpowering others, especially women.
I use macho man here negatively to refer to the man in Abuja who originally hails from Toto Local Government Area of Nasarawa State. The hypermasculinity in him, a toxic masculinity, pushed him to rape a vulnerable woman at knifepoint because she owed him money. He loaned her money. He did not loan her money to help her. He loaned her money to exploit her, because the repayment agreement was on a very exploitative term. This is the story. Come along.
A predatory money lender in Lugbe, Abuja, who identified himself as Usman Mohammed, was arrested by the police for allegedly using loans to sexually exploit vulnerable women. He is a money lender who specialises in targeting the vulnerable, especially widows.
He lends money and demands weekly interest payments. In the recent case that got the attention of the media, a nursing mother borrowed ₦600,000 and was required to pay ₦30,000 weekly as interest, in addition to the principal. She missed a payment because of poor sales and went to him with ₦24,000.
A shortage of ₦6,000 earned this nursing mother probably the most inhumane assault of her life. He asked her to meet him where he parked his car. On getting there, he pushed her into his vehicle, threatened her with a knife, and drove her to a secluded location behind the chief’s palace in Lugbe, where he sexually assaulted her.
He was paraded by police spokesperson SP Josephine Adeh. According to his own confession, not “allegedly” as some newspapers report it, he admitted lending the ₦600,000 to the nursing mother, collecting ₦30,000 weekly, asking her to remove her clothes, raping her, and recording her nakedness because she could not make the full payment of the loan interest for that particular week.
This sexual predator was born by a woman. He has female relatives and probably has daughters who will likely become nursing mothers, married women, or widows in future. He said he was married with six children and pleaded for forgiveness. Does this man deserve forgiveness? Does he deserve mercy?
This is not presented as a single dispute over one loan. It seems the police are presenting it as a pattern, targeting widows and vulnerable women, with filming and death threats used as enforcement.
Any attempt to temper justice with mercy in this case is a perpetration of injustice by other means. Those who advocate death as a penalty for rapists must have this rapist in mind. Very wicked, very callous, very ruthless, and very heartless. If he had a heart, he is very stone-hearted.
Except for some providential intervention, the loan service condition is meant to impoverish this woman, and his other loan victims, and make them wretched for life. What kind of profit can one make on a ₦600,000 business capital with ₦30,000 weekly interest in this stern-looking and unfriendly economy?
This is why government must be awake and on its feet, or up and doing as we say it in local parlance, in providing regular soft loans with a workable process of recovery to market women, petty traders, and the vulnerable. This is why government must be responsible. Neighbours must be responsible. Colleagues at the place of work must be responsible. Family and friends must be responsible. Society must be responsible. I also must be responsible. Our philanthropists should be more philanthropic. We must all come together to nip the wickedness of usurious money lenders in the bud and keep them in abeyance by helping those in financial crisis.
In a society where there are bunches of irresponsible people who do not think the vulnerable deserve aid, money lenders like this rapist hold sway and multiply in number, making people who were born free become slaves with no option of manumission.
If not for this nursing mother’s gut to report the case, in a society where rape victims carry stigma like a cross, and the prompt intervention of the police, she would have literally become a sex slave perpetually at the service of her hedonistic creditor, whose hedonism is apparently pathological. He did not stop at raping her. He made a video recording of her naked private parts, which he would have used to blackmail her for life into submission to sexual servitude.
He is from Toto Local Government Area. This man has tarnished his name and that of his family and the responsible people in Toto. His people should reject him, for fear of contagion, because he is a plague.
I watched him shedding tears. No one should be moved to sympathy by his tears, his apparent remorsefulness, and his appeal for mercy. If he is truly remorseful and sincerely repents, that should be between him and God. I doubt he has any faith in God. No faithful person can be this heartless. In our various faiths, whether Islam or Christianity, widows are to be shown kindness. In fact, in Islam, the kindness should be superlative, and there is a special reward for anyone who shows kindness to widows.
The Prophet warned that the rights of the orphan and the woman are sacred and must not be violated. He further said the one who looks after and works for a widow and for a poor person is like a warrior fighting for Allah’s cause, to establish justice, or like a person who fasts during the day and prays all the night.
This rapist turned this religious injunction to show kindness to women, and particularly widows, on its head. He deserves no mercy. In his case, justice must be tempered with justice. He should rot in jail if the death penalty cannot be pronounced. He is a city bandit, a bandit that operates and resides in the city.
This nursing mother must have been in a financial crisis. For no reasonable person will agree to pay ₦30,000 weekly interest on a ₦600,000 loan. She must be financially depressed to have agreed to that slavish loan agreement. This rapist has added a traumatic layer to her depression. I call on well-to-do Nigerians to assist this woman. She needs financial and moral support to heal her wounds.
May our women not be victims, and may we not be rapists.
Abdulkadir Salaudeen
salahuddeenabdulkadir@gmail.com
