Lawmakers in Nigeria’s Kaduna state approved surgical castration as punishment for those convicted of evaluating young people under the age of 14.
The governor of the state, Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, will have to point to the bill to make it law in the northwestern state.
In the past, he supported castration to prevent rapists from reciting.
Nigeria’s federal law stipulates between 14 years and life imprisonment as punishment, but state legislators can set other sentencing rules.
Sometimes stigma prevents victims from reporting cases of rape in Nigeria and the number of successful prosecutions is low.
In June, Nigerian governors declared a state of emergency for rape and violence against children.
Since 2015, when a new law was passed, about 40 rape suspects have been charged, according to the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), which has a list of sex offenders on its website.
The new law expanded the scope of the sexual offence sanction in Nigeria and eliminated the two-month era in which rape instances had to be attempted before they ceased to be eligible to be heard in court.
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The agency’s director, Julie Okah-Donli, told the BBC that since the burden of evidence rests with the prosecution, demonstrating rape cases is “pretty tedious and technical. “
Surgical castration of convicted rapists has been debated in Nigeria for some time, especially as the recent coronavirus blockade increases.
There was widespread outrage in July following the murder of a 22-year-old college student who, according to her circle of relatives, brutally raped and beat to death.
It’s one of many shocking cases in a week that led to street protests, an online petition signed through thousands of other people, and a Twitter hashtag #WeAreTired.
Nigerians speak after wave of sexual violence
Many Nigerians have stricter laws, such as the death penalty.
“We believe that the new law will reduce the accumulation of rape cases in our state,” Kaduna lawmaker Shehu Yunusa told the BBC. “If Kaduna’s passenger introduces [this] law, the next rapist arrested in Kaduna could become the first user to be castrated under this new law,” he said.
Activist Dorothy Njemanze, a former victim, welcomed the bill and said she would like to see it approved in Nigerian states.
“In retrospect, if everyone who raped me had suffered this [surgical castration], other people they would have raped would also have been saved from calamity,” he said.
Surgical castration is not widely practiced internationally and is debatable in the few places where it is still used.
This is in the rules developed through the International Association for the Treatment of Sex Offenders (IATSO) and critics argue that physical effects are irreversible and can have serious physical and intellectual consequences.
If you have been affected by sexual abuse or violence in Nigeria, you may receive assistance in Naptip.
If you are in the UK, you can recommend it on BBC Action Line.