Why female teens love to poison their ex and father is a mystery but can they stop?
Two sides of a coin - it could be either women or men busy trying to make a way - both face the risk of being ended by jealous or vindictive intimate partners or relation seeking a pound of flesh..
Before last weekend, the idea of androcide as part of Nigeria’s daily life wasn’t yet a thing until a teenager Aisha Suleiman (16) killed her ex-boyfriend and every other person that dug into a poisoned pepper soup dish she had prepared for him, evidently as revenge but disguised as a gesture of friendship.
This food poisoning event happened on Saturday, 26 October 2024 at the Tin Afashio Community, Uzairue, Etsako Local Government Area, Edo State and that created a foul mood that made residents seek to lynch the teen.
Alongside the ex, Emmanuel Elogie (19), current girlfriend Ada Samuel (16), four other mutual friends including brothers Samuel Ayegwalo and Jeffrey Ayegwalo were found dead in a room by the father of the main person targeted.
Shocking as it may have been to have witnessed the premeditated poison attack by the suspect, Suleiman, it wasn’t going to be a one-off. As soon as her reported arrest by Nigerian Army officials surfaced, news about another teenager planting venom in her father came up.
This latest one got more social media coverage as it was a trending X topic like the previous scenario. Together, the instances when they are stitched together with a woman co-signing a tweet asking for more men to be killed suggest a trend that men are worried about as they probably should.
A profile on X tobiloba wrote: I say it every time! I need us to start KILLING these men! In a different post supporting this thought, __sunriseii agrees and it is why the account has been reported to law enforcement by those online and they will be looking to an outcome where officers track down such people sharing internet hatred towards their opposite gender.
Kenneth Adebayo on the social media platform can bluntly picture the risk. It was his post published yesterday where all these negative thoughts coming from some women were brought up. He sees a situation that portends deadly outcomes for the teenage male. Will they ever grow to become men if their unforgiving lovers kill them off?
The society is not friendly to the boy-child anymore, no one looks after the boy-child; they struggle for everything just to be successful. Now toxic evil girls in the name of being a feminist have started killing the boy-child, Kenneth tweets.
Past examples point to romance gone sour as the reason why girls grow the appetite to kill the lover who jilted them or hurt them in some kind of way.
These teens soon morph into women as the risk of the attitude staying on heightens. Even the second scenario being highlighted to blow the alarm on androcide possibly becoming a menace but women already see femicide in that kind of light.
When COVID-19 hit Nigeria in March 2020, workers except the essential ones, were forced to stay at home and that meant women and girls staying with their abusers who were either men or boys. They were either beaten or raped and faced the possibility of the violence becoming an ongoing cycle as long as their city is under quarantine. Other times too, men or boys are the ones being abused.
A total of 596 responses were received in an assessment performed by the Journal of Community Medicine and Primary Health Care and published on Tuesday 4 April 2023. Out of the respondents gathered, fifty-eight persons opted out. That is to say, they clicked that they did not want to participate in the survey of the study being done. This meant 538 respondents giving a response rate of 90.3%.
From what was analysed, about half 273 (50.7%) of the respondents were within the 35-44 years age group. There was a preponderance of females 346 (64.3%) in the assessment and most of them with their partners as well were within the upper social class.
Sexual violence was the most common form experienced by men who make up 54 of those sampled while emotional violence was the most common form reported by women numbering up to a hundred.
All these are grounds for be it androcide or femicide as one party seeks justice in their kind of way, and that is what needs to stop. Even though the killings are still going on, it does not mean that those who suffer emotional pain cannot find an outlet to heal them of their grief before it unleashes their thirst for murder.
Sub-regional governments in Nigeria are creating room for the victims of intimate partner violence to find much-needed assistance. Like the way Lagos State has established the Domestic and Sexual Violence Agency (DSVA).
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This is an organisation under government supervision and one that is committed to ensuring the total eradication of sexual and gender-based violence in the State. They have the Eko Haven initiative; it is a shelter for domestic violence survivors.
Eko Haven was launched under DSVA’s April 2022-appointed Executive Secretary Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi as an Ikorodu-placed shelter with a 30-bed space capacity. There, efforts are going on to ease the overburdened minds of the victims while they walk back to their confidence and humanity one stage after the other.
