07 Feb 2008 |
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| Much ado about indecent dressing By Reuben Abati The subject of indecent dressing has once again been smuggled into public discourse by Nigeria's morality police, those self-appointed guardians of public health who simply won't give up complaining about what they perceive to be the decadence in the sartorial comportment of contemporary Nigerians. Yes, we live in a season of moral turpitude. Yes, Nigeria needs moral renewal. But I think it is presumptuous to judge a person's moral standing by his or her dressing. In Oyo state, senior civil servants have now been directed by the state government, through the Head of Service, to wear suits on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. "They could appear in native dresses on Wednesdays and Fridays.. .Junior officers who are exempted from this rule should not be found going about in loose shirts." According to Dr Ebenezer Okebukola, the Oyo state Head of Service, "the dress code is applicable to all categories of workers including teachers who should be role models for their students." But then Okebukola jumped into the pit of sheer chauvinism when he gave the following directive on the dress code for female civil servants: "Blouse is acceptable. But not anything mini or see-through in whatever form. You can even wear your hijab without covering your face. If it covers your face, you become a ghost worker." Pray, how does a person become a ghost simply by covering her face? It is true that certain professions have dress codes and that under some circumstances, employers of labour may prescribe a dress code for their workers. But this should not be a priority task for the Oyo state government. Will the sartorial revolution being ordered by the state authorities translate into better service delivery? Will the wearing of suits by Oyo senior civil servants facilitate the fixing of the bad roads in the state, as well as the provision of other facilities? I only hope that the office of the Oyo State Head of Service will not end up telling the civil servants where to sew their suits and where the women must buy their blouses. Often times in Nigeria, when policies like this are introduced, it is not necessarily because the government is interested in any people-oriented objective, but only to create patronage for a particular relation of an influential public official! One state Governor once made the wearing of safety helmets compulsory for okada riders. It was later discovered that his private company had imported some safety helmets before he got to office and he needed to clean out his warehouse. What is the penalty for the flouting of the state government dress code? Dr Okebukola didn't state this. But let him and his bosses please direct their efforts towards actual governance, rather than chasing civil servants all over the Secretariat to monitor compliance with the state dress code. But by far, the bigger drama over dress code is represented by the debate of a bill now before the National Assembly titled: "an Act to Prohibit and Punish Public Nudity, Sexual Intimidation and Related Offences". The Bill has passed through the Second Reading stage at the Senate. It is sponsored by Senator Eme Ekaette from Akwa Ibom state, Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women and Youth Affairs. She says indecent dressing promotes "vices in the society... we are seeing a lot of moral decadence in the society today." She says her bill will help "to preserve cultural norms and values". .Hear her: "If you want to wear something, I believe that there are certain parts of the body that must be covered. You cannot go naked in the name of fashion." For some curious reason, this bill has generated some excitement among the Senators. One Senator stood up and said all his daughters dress very well because his wife would not allow them to engage in any form of indecent dressing! And this drivel is supposed to be recorded as a very important contribution to an issue of national interest! Another Senator reportedly drew the attention of his colleagues to how some banks have unleashed their female staff on members of the National Assembly. These girls according to him, are busy collecting the phone numbers of lawmakers and harassing them with provocative dresses, while asking for deposits. He wants the banks to stop using the girls as bait. I am surprised that none of the banks has risen in defence of female bankers, not even a word from the Association of Female Bankers, or the Institute of Bankers. But the debate on the floor of the Senate as well as the earlier directive by the Oyo State Head of Service expose one major limitation of the expressed concerns about indecent dressing and the moral health of the community. Whereas the champions seem concerned about moral values, they always end up reducing their contributions to a verbal assault on the sartorial integrity of Nigerian women. The issue is always about women who expose parts of their body when they wear "mini-skirts or see-through clothes" And men are quick to complain about how they are exposed to sexual intimidation from women. They do not talk about indecent dressing among men. But really is this the kind of subject that the National assembly should be discussing? And with so much passion and excitement? I had expected the debate to focus more on rape, and the need for a review of the existing law on rape, or perhaps a law that empowers women in many aspects of their lives including healthcare decision making and property rights. There are also weighty issues that Nigerians expect the National Assembly to address with greater vigour: The Freedom of Information Bill or Violence Against Women for example. But indecent dressing is such a fascinating subject because it allows male contributors to the debate to talk about how young women are looking for the telephone numbers of male lawmakers in Abuja! The legislature is required by law to make laws for the good governance of Nigeria. I do not see how an obsession with indecent dressing promotes this objective. Senator Ekaette has been asked to take a second look at the Bill and prescribe penalties for persons who are found guilty of indecent dressing or nudity. But how do we determine what is decent or indecent? Ordinarily, people's dressing in Nigeria reflects the nation's diversity and the concept of decency is relative. A Yoruba man for example may consider the appearance of an Efik man, tying a wrapper rather indecent. In Yorubaland, it is assumed that only a lazy man will tie a wrapper during day time. There are parts of this country and of course mostly in the rural areas where young women go about topless. That is nudity to the morality police. But it is perfectly normal appearance in certain communities. When a Yoruba woman opens her wrapper and ties and unties it repeatedly in public, an Isoko woman may think she is being indecent, whereas for the average Yoruba woman, playing around with the wrapper repeatedly in that fashion is considered an acceptable reflex action. There is this Yoruba woman whose specialty seems to be the tying of sky-scraper head gears. You can't meet her and not be distracted by her over-articulate head-gear. I have heard someone refer to her appearance for this reason alone as indecent. So, will she be arrested by the morality police for being creative? The Bill, if passed into law will be most difficult to implement. It will generate much outrage among persons who will consider it an attempt to impose a uniform dress code on the entire country. Dressing is an aspect of free speech. It is linked to the individual's right to express himself or herself freely and to make a choice. Telling all Nigerians what to wear and how, will have no effect whatsoever on moral values nor will it in any way preserve cultural norms and values. There is an existing law which forbids indecent exposure "in any public place"; I refer to Section 231 of the Criminal Code but even this is difficult to enforce. Not too long ago, the police in Lagos state had tried to force the issue when they started combing the streets of Lagos to arrest persons whom they thought had violated the rule on indecent exposure. As it turned out, they were more interested in arresting young ladies. If a lady was sitting at the back of an okada and her thigh was a bit exposed, the okada was stopped and the lady was dragged into a pick up van and driven to a police station and charged with constituting herself into a public nuisance. If any lady exposed any part of her flesh, the police would label her a prostitute and arrest her. The situation became so embarrassing that the state government which was being accused of ordering the arrest had to openly disown the morality police. The Lagos state government even offered legal assistance to anyone who wanted to press charges for the violation of her basic rights. Similarly, when states in the north which had adopted the Sharia began to harass innocent women for so-called "indecent dressing", there were protests about the violation of human rights. Mrs Ekaette's law on indecent dressing can only further promote violence against women and police brutality. Why should anyone bother really about a national dress code? And who are they in the National Assembly preaching morality? Do we by any chance have among them the fraudsters and thieves that Senator Nuhu Aliyu spoke about? We should be more concerned about how to get our hospitals to work, about how to fix the bad roads across the nation, about how to upgrade the public school system... we should be more concerned about the growing army of poor and disgruntled citizens, the menace of disguised unemployment, and the rise of criminality. There is insecurity in the land: wives, daughters, fathers of influential people are being kidnapped, and the kidnappers are asking for ransom, An exposed part of a female body will not bring down the nation, but poverty and crime are destroying the land. Yes, the moral health of the nation is important. But those who want to raise moral standards should begin their campaign at the level of the family.. Parents can do a lot to educate their children about etiquette and civility. Let the religious organisations also preach about moral issues. And let the national assembly worry about more the challenges of good governance, not morality In Oyo state, the only effect that the Alao-Akala government's dress code for civil servants is generating is that fashion designers in the state are said to be excited. Lagos-based tailors are also all on their way to Oyo state where sartorial elegance has become state policy, and clearly a more important pre-occupation than service delivery. I haven't seen the Governor and members of the state House of Assembly in those prescribed smart suits yet. May be they should lead by example.
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