Doomed babies

APHRODITE, the mythological goddess of fertility, appears to have taken up residence in Nigeria. It has been raining babies that are as wanted as dirty rainwater in the gutter. The baby boomers are being doomed by their mothers; they are being crushed and not cuddled, being killed and not kissed.

A one-day-old baby was abandoned on a railway track in Ikeja on March 4. Its mother did not trip and drop it while trainspotting. She did not mistake the track for a plush pram. She knew the train would shatter her baby’s body, that it would turn it into meat in a mincer.

Most women who abandon their babies in Nigeria are young and unmarried. Many of them are teenagers and they abandon their babies for a variety of reasons: some to escape shame or stigma and others because the men who got them pregnant are cruel cads.

Not many Nigerian women deliberately kill their unwanted babies. It does not appear that Nigerian women suffer from baby blues. They are not darkly depressed after giving birth. They do not batter their babies to death because they cry throughout the night.

Baby blues or postpartum disorders have been blamed for the rising infanticide in some developed countries. Most Western women who kill their babies are married, but are unable to cope with the emotional and physical demands of motherhood.

Financial pressure plays a big part in the abandonment of babies in Nigeria. Many women who abandon their babies do so because they lack the means to feed and clothe them. They abandon the babies in accessible places, but some of the babies die before they are found.

Hetty Sorrel wants her baby dead. She falls for the somewhat rakish Captain Arthur Donnithorne and gives Adam Bede, a carpenter, the elbow. She is comely and calculating.

Hetty discovers she is pregnant, but Captain Donnithorne has left town. She agrees to marry Bede knowing she is pregnant with another man’s child. The wedding is a stillbirth-it is not held-but her baby is not. She has the baby after failing to trace Captain Donnithorne and abandons it. The baby’s body is discovered and Hetty is tried for its murder. She is sentenced to death by hanging.

This is fiction that George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) based on fact in Adam Bede. Many young Nigerian women who get into amorous trouble are not unlike Hetty Sorrel. They set their sights too high, wanting to quickly reach the top without using the wings of work.

They easily fall victim to men with pots of stolen money. Many of such ladies are said to be undergraduates. Some military officers were said to have engaged in regular orgies during military rule and some of the country’s new men of power have reportedly embraced the crude coital custom. Female undergraduates are paraded before them like slaves in a Virginian market before the American Civil War.

It is worse than what happened during the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) as related by an author: ‘The young daughters of the Viennese middle-class and minor bureaucrats were available at very reasonable rates, and the city was full of women who had come for the express purpose of furthering their careers.’ What careers?

Pregnancies sometimes result from these one-night stands. It was reported some years ago that an undergraduate tried to flush her newborn baby down the toilet in a hall of residence.

But some of the young ladies got pregnant in Nigeria are as ingenuous as Mercy in A.B. Guthrie’s The Way West. She is taken advantage of by an experienced man and becomes pregnant. A young man about her age restates his love for her. He does not do it out of pity. He is propelled by devotion and not by a sense of duty, by passion and not by a pledge. It is not the passion of wild desire, but the passion to protect, to penetrate sadness and cure it with the sweet-tasting lozenge of love and understanding.

Many Nigerian girls in Mercy’s uncomfortable shoes do not find understanding. Their parents when they get to know or are told about their condition become raving maniacs and physically throw them out of the house. They have made a mistake, but their parents see their getting pregnant as a terrible crime, as a deliberate assault on their social standing. They are more concerned about what their neighbours think than how their daughters feel. They do not ask themselves if their failings as parents contributed to their daughters’ weakness or even ignorance.

The girls are usually also rejected by the young men who got them pregnant. They are not ready for marriage and make cruel accusations. They accuse the girls of being as promiscuous as Aphrodite, who enjoyed the close company of many gods and the men who worshipped them.

A pregnant girl rejected by both her parents and the person who got her pregnant may be tempted to abandon her baby. She may behave like Hetty Sorrel, who does not want her baby to live, and will abandon it in a hostile environment. And the baby may not be saved like the one abandoned on a railway track in Ikeja. He will not become another Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who tried to commit suicide in the United States by lying in the path of a train. A human guardian angel appeared and Dr. Azikiwe’s life was saved. He, of course, became the first president of Nigeria.

Young people need to be educated on the facts of life. More registered orphanages may be needed. Some of them were set up to criminally exploit unfortunate young women, according to reports in the media. There appears to be a baby racket in some parts of the country. It may be unwise to suggest abortion in certain circumstances in a hypocritical country like Nigeria.

The abandonment of babies may not end soon and even punishment may not stop the practice. But abandoned babies can be helped to live and become respectable citizens. Tom Jones, the hero of Henry Fielding’s novel of the same name, is an abandoned baby, but he survives, gets married and lives happily ever after.

Your view

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict leaves a sour taste in the mouth. It beats my imagination why the two sides continue to tread the same path that leads to nowhere. Violence and bloodletting cannot solve any problem and Hamas in particular appears set to see that a Palestinian state never sees the light of day since its method is diametrically at variance with its announced purpose.

So Hamas is on the path to self-destruct because if it says Israel has no right to exist, then it remains to be seen how a child who says his mother will not sleep will find it convenient to sleep.
Jide, Kaduna

The time has come for the murderous Hamas to stop inviting unmitigated calamities to hapless Gazans. It should drop its warped political ideologies and embrace a more workable and acceptable approach. Ordinary Gazans wish to live in peace with their Israeli neighbours.
King Yemmy Adu, Benin City

Nigeria has many immodest people whose ignoble roles in the past cannot be covered up. They have tried to hoodwink Nigerians into seeing them as heroes, but the truth will always be.
Vincent Ekumatalor, Benin City

I write to humbly ask you to seriously consider the compilation of all your articles since you started writing. I was introduced to your column nearly 18 months ago, and knowing what I have missed fills me with rage.
Kevin Nwaefulu, Odyssey2005@hotmail.co.uk

I do not need to congratulate you because numerous greater minds had done that time and again. I only wish for our youths to have access to these immeasurable contributions of yours. That everybody will know the truth and the truth shall set Nigeria free
Kunle Adejumo, kunleadejumo@yahoo.com