The Tamale Sex Scandal: My Solemn Reflection - Part Two

Our elders have always told us that when you trip and fall, you do not look where you fall - to find what caused it, instead, you look where you tripped. Our sisters have tripped and tumbled over, there cannot do anything now, we can. It is human for God's sake.

In view of this, I think we need to save our community from this devilish act and not succumb as a people to this cankerous treatment that has been unleashed on our beloved society. Can we be empathetic for once to ourselves? Today it is someone's daughter, it will be your sister tomorrow if we laugh over it. I would not wish this for my sister and I believe you would not desire this for your sister either.

Accordingly, Parents must help and seek support for these ladies before we begin to count casualties; another win for him. This is the time our family institutions must come into play. It will be extremely wrong for any parent or family members to despise them or for the community to alienate them. Readers of this piece should be inspired into action and take this task, remind their parents of their God given duty to their children, call on their friends to their pledged everlasting love, trust and care. I further urge readers to preach to brothers and sisters not to forsaken them and that it should not be seen as ignominious to the families and that it is just an error of judgement and we will learn lessons from that. What about our opinion leaders? The daunting assignment will never end, they should be called to order to be a bit more considerate and responsible as leaders. They should be advised and reminded of what they represent. I still think they can do better and bring development rather than add more insults to our injuries. They can be no justice in punishing victims whilst the culprit is left to plan another attacks. We should not loose rational and reasoning at this critical moment. They should put on their thinking hats, invoke their endowed wisdom, revisit the issue holistically with tact and due diligence and find solutions to this catastrophe. Authorities must not speak when there are not sure of what they are talking about. Some statements have legal implications and advisers should tell them not to knee- jerk into reaction without carefully though and informed responses, for there may come back to haunt them.

For all you know at this juncture, the perpetrator's family and friends will be solidly behind him with all the support and try to justify and rationalise or provide all sorts of excuses for his actions. Can you imagine how betraying it will be for victim's family to abandon them on the other side of the string? Today the ladies attempts to secure a perceive responsible man has gone virulent and we are dissociating ourselves from them, if it had gone perfectly well and he had come down with good intentions and married one of the girls, we would have been the very same people hailing and partying to the glory of our daughter's success; what a double standard. I know some people cannot appreciate how agonising and stressful situation these ladies are in today, neither can they think it can stretch a person to a breaking point. Specialised interventions are paramount for these ladies. Some religious organisations could take this as a moral responsibility, I will advise.

In other words, people in power should organise counselling for them as their community responsibility. I call on the civil society organisations to rise up and discharge their avowed duties, experts working the NGOs, professionals in departments and individuals should close their ranks, pull resource together, see them as victims of a calamity and offer them all the necessary help.

In particular, to our legal firms and other business organisations operating in the region, I plead to remind you of your corporate social responsibilities to the community. I will want to add at this stage that under our labour laws no organisation has the right to terminate any of this victim's employment because of what happened in their social lives. There have not committed any offense at their work places therefore do not deserve any dismissal from work. Anybody who does this should be reminded of human right infringement and conducting themselves in a manner that will be at variant with our labour laws. At best they should organise HIV counselling sessions and tests for them or negotiate transfers with them at their own convenience. Those in school or not doing anything at this time as well deserve better.

I will not conclude without kicking these victims in the ass, for it take two to tango, they participated with all the "good" reasons and had more than what they bargained for. These are moments in their lives they will never forget but will ever regret for giving their trust to a psychopath, someone so cunning and manipulative. I will therefore call on anybody touched by this to think deeper and not look at it from a single lens. May I posit that it will be out of place to conclude that girls of today are money driven in their search to lifelong partners? Whether rich or poor, local or abroad, each and every one has to marry and will have to follow the same old process. If you insist, I will ask you to show me a girl who will work hard to obtain a qualification in school, get a job and turn to accept anything in trousers. It is a social fact if you know what social mobility is; you and I cannot change it. Or if you cannot still agree with me then show me a young man who equally works hard to succeed and turns round to look for anything in skirt and not look for a lady who is in his class with all the qualities a deserving lady should have. Much as young men scout for equal sizes, so will girls scour for comfort. Why then do we consider only women as gold diggers? I consider it as the usual stereotyping and absolute lack of respect for the female sex.

Finally, I will insist that our society is not the worst, it may be hit by this quake of our time but we will recover and move on. Let us not shoot ourselves in the foot by giving in to this hitch. We can fix it, “yes we can” we can get over it, we have done it before. We cannot let our girls down and make the young girls somewhat paranoid and create a different problem. There are still good young men at home or outside, this is just one out of a million. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake provided we learn lessons from it. We all have hitches in our lives at one time or the other . This should not meltdown our society so let us rise again, shame our foe and party with our friends.

These are just the views of a community activist

Abdul-Fatahi Abdulai
UK