Listeners to the recent 98.1 Radio Democracy interview of the Amnesty International (AI) country representative, Sabrina Mahtani should be forgiven for not being able to fathom whose interest she was trying to serve. In one and the same breath she came out as abrasive, condescending, arrogant, livid, passionate and ultimately out rightly rude and disrespectful of the government. When one of the presenters of the radio show questioned her irate demeanour, she replied that she was just being “passionate”.
Embarrass
Passionate about what for God’s sake? Could Sabrina claim to have the interest of those impregnated school dropouts much more than the elected government of this country? Is it possible for a faithful to be more “Catholic than a Papal See?” Sabrina claimed to have lived here in excess of ten years, yet she deliberately insisted on being interviewed in the English language so as to exploit the geographical coverage of the radio station and embarrass the government to the satisfaction of her external handlers. There would be no further need for translations to convince them that indeed, she had actually “dealt” with our government.
Ultimatum
Sabrina’s assertion (swallowed hook, line and sinker by home grown opposition CSO accomplices) that 10,000 girl children have been banned from taking public exams and attending regular schooling because they had all been impregnated through rapes was as inaccurate as it has remained ludicrous, because the first logical conclusion to be drawn is that this country has 10,000 corresponding rapists roaming our cities streets; scot-free. Unprosecuted. Un-reprimanded. And I suppose that was why she had the brazen audacity (taking a cue from home grown CSOs) to have issued an “ultimatum” to the government to reverse the ban precluding impregnated school “women” from taking public examinations “now”, because as she put it, “……it was against their human right to access education” What temerity!!
Rights
Human right? Does Amnesty International not have offices in China where until last week, the citizens’ God given right to procreation was usurped and restricted to one child per family for over a generation? What of the untold sufferings currently experienced in various war torn countries? Or the refusal of entry clearances by various countries to immigrants escaping turmoil in their countries of origin? Don’t they have a right to peace and prosperity as well? Are they (AI) unaware that even as they have pressured our government to put the death penalty in abeyance, it is still enforced in the United States of America her adopted country?
What Sabrina probably failed to accept is that every person’s right to everything ends where the next person’s own right begins, which in this case would mean that girls who chose the “straight and narrow” and did not become pregnant during the Ebola period (which incidentally was country wide) also have a right to be educated under conducive and unpolluted circumstances and environments, instead of being forcefully locked up in the same classrooms with those who chose to become pregnant. So this much trumpeted human rights mantra ought to be circumspectly applied. Equally so, it was most incongruous for Sabrina to relate the situation of the impregnated girls to boys who, despite having P.o.P casts on their limbs are allowed to continue classes uninterrupted. The two do not even compare. But the devil can always quote the scriptures to satisfy its whims.
Child Mothers!!
An environment where mothers strap their babies to their backs in classes, or take time out to change their diapers or breast feed them as Teachers pause classes intermittently until they each finish what they’re doing; or where the “pupils” take exit or hang their heads out of windows to throw-up frequently because of morning sicknesses is certainly not a regular school. That’s why it revolts me so much to hear highly educated Radio/TV Pro-Child Rights Presenter-Advocates refer to them as “child-mothers!!”. A child cannot beget a child (pikin nor dae born pikin”). Getting pregnant, whether as a willing accomplice or not is no kid’s stuff. And once you are able to carry a pregnancy and access ante-natal facilities during that stage in life, you are certainly done with regular classroom school life because you cannot have it both ways. Accordingly the government’s action to arrange suitable continuing education platforms for pregnant and lactating impregnated school drop-out mothers is as commendable as had been its thrusts for supporting continuing education for Tech-Voc students.
Social Climbers
As things stand, our countless Radio/TV Pro-child Rights Presenter-Advocates would need to change their posturing to reflect a commitment to the development of the psyche of victims of under-age pregnancies by working with, and encouraging the government to direct adequate funding for the setting up of more facilities through which their capacities and confidence could be strengthened after delivery of their babies. Otherwise I will continue to see them only as self-seeking opportunists and presumptuous social climbers exploiting their proximity to the corridors of power, at the detriment of the very group they purportedly wish to help. Many deprived children have made good uses of such opportunities in the past, and many could still do it again.
Pretensions
Yes according to Sabrina, pregnant girls and lactating mothers are allowed regular class attendance in US schools and are even provided with cribs and Nannies during school hours, but the fact that the offspring of the Reagans, Bushes, Obamas, Ratanskis, Trumps, Clintons, Mahtanis or any member of the British Royal family do not patronize those schools underscores the low esteem in which they are held. And that’s where the stigmatization begins, because every decent family would avoid exposing their own “hopefully” well-bred children to negative social peer pressures. Those watching “Wey Yus” and regular news coverage by various TV stations in the past few days would have noticed that contrary to pretensions, those footages did not even show the faces of the impregnated girls. Why hide their faces if they were so important?
Dissonance
Like many other imperialist sponsored outfits, the Amnesty International are mainly focused on either supplanting traditional cultural values or sowing seeds of dissonance as would arouse discords among the electorate and make governments unpopular, especially as elections loom. To them, no government human rights achievement is satisfactory until it is fully compliant with their every dictate. And the more successful they are in those pursuits, the greater the trail of chaos in the wake of their implementation in various countries-: Egypt, Libya, Iraq to name a few. The only way to guard against such prevarications is to reduce the premium African governments continue place on international NGOs (INGOs).
Until now, their operations are not only less scrutinized by the appropriate supervising MDAs, they are allowed too much latitude to flex airs and muscles in manners both unseen and unheard of in their countries of origin, such as being given opportunities to make statements at every governance fora and unrestricted accesses to those in authority. That was why even though Deputy Minister Theo Nicol’s real time reaction was spot on, I did not believe Sabrina was worth such a sublime attention. It has to be said that even if she is in a state of inebriated stupor, she would never have the audacity to berate the government of her home country with such irascibility and utter disrespect like she did to ours last week.
We should begin to effectively regulate and control all INGOs operating here without compromising the Access to Information laws.
By: Winstanley.R.Bankole Johnson
ADVERTISEMENT