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18.11.2014 General News

'Sharia MP' Hot

By Daily Guide
'Sharia MP' Hot
18.11.2014 LISTEN

Nelson Baani- MP for Daboya
Pressure is mounting on the Member of Parliament (MP) for Daboya/Makarigu, Nelson Abudu Baani, to abdicate his seat following his call for adulterous women to be hanged or stoned to death in a manner akin to Islamic Sharia Law.

Contributing to a debate on the floor of Parliament last Thursday on a bill on intestate succession (Property Rights of Spouses Bill), the MP said 'day-in-day-out in Afghanistan, if you go behind your husband they hang you. So if they add that, we will get very genuine women in families.'

His comments have incurred the displeasure of the public, including some members of his own party, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Even though the once loud gender activist and now Gender, Children and Social Protection Minister, Nana Oye Lithur, has kept mum over the issue, various individuals and concerned groups have started a campaign to get the MP out, with calls on the NDC to sack him from their fold.

Leading the charge is protest movement, OccupyGhana, which has called for the MP to apologise for and retract what they described as 'his misogynistic statement' and then 'resign from Ghana's august House of Parliament.'

In a statement,  the group said 'if Nelson Abudu Baani does not resign from Parliament on his own accord, OccupyGhana calls on the ruling NDC, on whose ticket Nelson Abudu Baani contested and won election to Parliament, to show Ghanaians and the world at large that it does not share in his cancerous views by delisting him from the party.'

They expressed shock that Baani expressed those views—which they have described as 'uncivilised words'—in the presence of the Speaker of Parliament, Edward Doe Adjaho, as well as female MPs who did not castigate or object to the repulsive viewpoint, which according to them, has deeply offended right-thinking Ghanaian men and women.

'For the sake of justice, peace and development, violence and discrimination against women must be recognised and criticised in all its overt and covert forms,' the group said, noting that 'adultery is not committed by women alone; and it is not even a crime in Ghana.'

It was in this vein that OccupyGhana said '…his warped and pre-historic notion of punishment for adultery to women exclusively, betrays an agenda of violence against women and a view of women that is deeply sexist.'

According to them, 'to leave Nelson Abudu Baani's reprehensible statement without comment, and for him to continue to be paid by the Ghanaian taxpayer to make laws for this country, create a blot on his record.'

Aside that, they said 'the danger of Nelson Abudu Baani's inflammatory views can be seen in the actions of violent groups with likeminded extreme anti-women ideologies such as the Taliban, the Islamic State and, in our own West African region, Boko Haram, which are wreaking so much terror against women and whole communities.'

According to the pressure movement, 'it is this kind of unfortunate and dangerous thinking that informed the wholesale kidnapping of school girls in Chibok, Northern Nigeria, many of whom are reported to have been forcibly married by Boko Haram.' The group insisted that 'Baani's murderously bizarre expressions could easily combine with the poverty and under-employment of young, impressionable men in Ghana to spark unwanted support for extremist views in our peaceful country.'

The MP, however, made a quick retreat yesterday, apologising for the offensive comments.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
 
 
 
 
 

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