Delu’s Dilemma

Also published in Daily Trust

Delu is a decent young lady raised by a devout Muslim family in a largely conservative society, where she goes through a very rigorous process of moral upbringing cherished by her family, school and the community at large. Furthermore, her religious decency gets boost following the religious renaissance, which brings about more reforms and culminates in the adoption of Islamic Shari’a by her state and many other states in the region.

Such reforms seek to -among other things- regulate contact between adult males and females by introducing and sometimes enforcing certain measures to curb unnecessary mingling and unregulated gender mix between adult males and females. After all, even before such formal adoption of Shari’a, her society had gone far in that regard. 

For instance, public schools and indeed most of the private schools had already adopted Hijab- i.e. Islamic veil as part of girls’ school uniform, which was a departure from the old system when a school girl would only wear a short gown that hardly covered her knees, and with only a cap or a tiny headscarf barely covering some of her hair. Also even in mixed schools, boys and girls had already been separated in classes, while before then they were mixed.

Delu’s particular state appears unmistakably Islamic even to the casual observer. Government discourages commercial vehicle owners from mixing male and female passengers in the same vehicle or at least on the same seat, as it also bans commercial motorcyclists (’yan achaba) from taking female customers. It also introduces commercial vehicles dedicated for female passengers only.

Anyway and though Delu’s academic pursuit was cut short by her parents after finishing her secondary school in order to marry her off to an Islamic cleric, she had already memorized the noble Qur’an in addition to acquiring fair amounts of both western and Islamic education. Also her husband encourages her to –in addition to her Hijab- cover her whole face with Niqab, which she willingly obliges.

Being that religious and decent in such a quasi puritanical society, Delu substantially represents morality in practice and of course expects to see it everywhere. However, she gets the shock of her life when she goes to hospital to be delivered of her first baby, where she finds that she will have to be handled by a male gynaecologist instead of a female.

She is visibly confused and terribly shocked. She obviously never expected that after all such official and communal commitment to Islamic morals, pregnant women still have to be attended to by male doctors. She wonders and of course fails to understand how a society with such level of obsession with morally particularly as it relates to male and female interaction seems ironically indifferent to such a very serious paradox. While still in shock, even her husband and her parents do not seem to bother much, instead they even lambast her for being too naïve, which adds to her shock.

She eventually finds out that, though the whole society claims to be unhappy with this situation, only a few people seem to realize the imperative of working towards changing it. Instead almost everybody seems to cling to the ready-made explanation of “ai larura ce”, i.e. it is unavoidable, yet hardly if at all anyone including the government is seriously engaged in any deliberate collective or individual initiative to turn this so-called unavoidable avoidable.

For instance, while government lacks any special strategy to train -or at least temporarily hire- enough non-indigene female gynaecologists to gradually replace males at least in public hospitals, many families are still opposed to the idea of allowing their daughters to pursue higher education. And even amongst those who allow them, only a few care to encourage and prepare them to undergo the appropriate formal training leading to the acquisition of the necessary professional qualifications for such profession.

Anyway, though Delu’s story is hypothetical, it nonetheless represents what millions of chaste women go through in silence in the society. Incidentally I don’t necessarily question the moral and professional integrity of all male gynaecologists to handle women; I am instead opposed –in principle- to any situation whereby a male, no matter how morally sound, would have such a complete access to the chastity of a woman not his wife.

Moreover, it is obvious that in such a situation, sexual abuse against women patients by some unscrupulous male gynaecologists can’t be ruled out.  After all, I am sure that, the case of a doctor in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital some years ago, who was caught cuddling the breasts of an expectant mother in labour room is not uncommon in reality, because similar or even worse cases of such nature could easily go undetected hence unreported.

By the way, in as much as I commend the Kano state government for sponsoring hundreds of its outstanding indigenes to pursue their post graduate studies aboard, I believe that the initiative would have been much more productive had the process of nominating the potential beneficiaries strictly considered the order of priority in identifying the areas where qualified professionals are most needed in the state.

I am sure that, had the government seriously considered that criterion, female candidates wishing to study gynaecology would have constituted at least eighty percent of all the beneficiaries. This is because the need to provide enough female gynaecologists to replace males is much more urgent than the need to have almost all the specializations considered in that initiative.

Nevertheless, barely a few days later, the same Kano state government also announced that it had also sponsored 25 students to study marine engineering in the United State and India at the cost of eighty million dollars annually, which is approximately fifty billion naira for the four year course for all of them.

I really wonder what logic can justify this brazen misplacement of priority. Kano state is after all a land-locked state, where there is no ocean or even a sea to justify the need for indigene marine engineers. This means that, when they come back they will not find a place to work in the state hence they will end up working elsewhere, where the state will not benefit from their expertise despite investing such a huge amount in their training.

On the other hand, people also should match their concern with appropriate actions i.e. to encourage their daughters to pursue formal expertise and specialization in whatever profession necessary in handling and attending to females’ issues of such nature.

Without these mutually complimenting measures, this dilemma is not likely to come to an end, hence the chastity of many women would continue to be abused by some unscrupulous elements amongst male gynaecologists.