Posted by This Day (Lagos) By Sonnie Ekwowusi on
Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State has recently come under the sledge-hammer for adopting a compulsory HIV screening/pregnancy test policy which many feel verge on sheer religious obscurantism and runs counter to the World HIV-screening policies and the 1999 Nigerian constitution.
Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State has recently come under the sledge-hammer for adopting a compulsory HIV screening/pregnancy test policy which many feel verge on sheer religious obscurantism and runs counter to the World HIV-screening policies and the 1999 Nigerian constitution.
I completely share the view of the critics that HIV and pregnancy tests ought not be made compulsory for graduating female students of the Covenant University. In fact, compliance with the voluntary confidentiality, pre-counseling and post-counseling HIV-test guidelines is mandatory. For taking their blood sample for HIV-screening, some patients have simply walked out of the hospital and committed suicide on the assumption that they were suffering from Aids.
As I have argued elsewhere with the support of case laws, the State has a right to call to order the unreasonable way in which religion is practised. Infringement of human rights, barbarism, violence, murder, rituals, occultism, cutting of fingers, burning at stake, mass suicide etc cannot be committed in the name of religion and under the cover of professing one's faith. Having said this, we cannot shoot down the whole moral compass or denigrate the time-tested principles which have uplifted many unworkable institutions in Nigeria or trivialize the gravity of the HIV scourge afflicting the Nigerian youth simply because some institutions are applying the principles wrongly.
To jettison the whole tested principles due to their improper application by some is tantamount to throwing away the baby with the dirty water. Without holding brief for the Covenant University, impelled by the sporadic spread of HIV among University students caused mainly by the sexual revolution sweeping across many University campuses and higher institutions of learning, Covenant University and Bishop David Oyedepo, its Chancellor, have proceeded to proffer solutions within the limit of their little resources and imagination. It is unfortunate that these well-intentioned efforts have been marred by wrong approach. Covenant University, if you like, may be simply over-reacting to the HIV problems constituting a threat to our survival.
According to UNAIDS (UN co-coordinating agency for Aids), youth and students in the age bracket of 15 -25 are the most vulnerable to HIV. Illicit sex accounts for 70% of HIV transmission in Sub-Sahara Africa Nigeria inclusive. However some argue that Aids is not only contracted through sex. So why the fuss about HIV/pregnancy tests? The truth remains that the bulk of the HIV transmission among Nigerian youths and students is through sexual immorality. So if you cure the youth of sexually immorality, you cure them of Aids. Studies have shown that the adolescent brain is psychologically geared for impulsiveness and risk-taking behaviour. The youth and students are always on a voyage of discovery and experimentation. A few years ago, the fresh in-takes of one private University next door to Lagos were screened for HIV, 30% of them tested HIV positive. As far back as March 2004, the Federal Ministry of Health affirmed that 60% of new HIV infections is found between the age group of 10-24 years. Nigeria is in the unenviable position of being the number three, after India and South Africa, in the "League Table" of people living with HIV/Aids (PLWHA). Any wonder Covenant University is fidgeting and looking for solutions.
Agreed, Covenant University may have erred, but who can show us the pathway to a safe harbour? I ask this question because it is in this country that a Lagos-based NGO, heavily-sponsored by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation of Chicago, United States, Packard Foundation and the rest, has succeeded in conspiring with some officials of the Ministry of Education to corrupt the Integrated Science Curriculum (I still have a copy of the corrupted curriculum in my office) used by junior secondary students to include the rights to safe-sex, masturbation, homosexuality, drugs for breast-enlargement, drugs for abortion and sterilization etc and nobody is saying anything about it.
Is it not under our watch in this country that the National Action Committee on Aids (NACA), in violation of our constitution, is using the larger chunk of NACA funds in promoting promiscuity among Nigerian teens and university students through the distribution of condoms which, according to experts, contain voids (holes) and do not prevent the tiny Aids virus from passing?. Take a look around you and you will see the indecent exposure under the guise of modern fashion. Some Universities have now designed dress codes for their students to tackle sexual immorality on campuses. Some lecturers have barred badly-dressed girls from entering their offices. The other day I read in the Punch newspaper that the Lagos State government had arrested 90 indecently-dressed girls and charged them to court. Anybody who doesn't understand that the Nigerian crisis is a crisis of values is just begging the real issue. We are in a moral mess. That is why it is laughable that some scholars fall into the temptation of denigrating prayer and ethical values lived in private Universities. You see, right is not a licence to do anything. The fundamental human rights enshrined in sections 33 to 42 of our 1999 Constitution referred to by BAOBAB for Women's Human Rights are curtailed under section 45(1) of same Constitution to the extent that they invalidate any law that is reasonably justifiable in a democratic society in the interest of public order, public health and public morality.
After reading Professor Chidi Anselm Odikalu's piece entitled: In the Name of the Father ? (THISDAY, August 7, 2007), obviously a masterpiece rehashing of the old jurisprudential controversies regarding the divorcing of law from morality, untrammeled secularism (not secularity) in public life, taking away of prayer and God from public schools and all that, my mind went straight to two papers differently delivered by Professors Pat Utomi and Niyi Osundare on the Idea of a University. After drinking from the fountain of knowledge of John Henry Cardinal Newman, both authors respectively agree that aside from conferring degrees and certificates, a university is a place for the acquisition of character necessary for human progress in an atmosphere of freedom. While Osundare, in his valedictory paper at University of Ibadan craves for complete education makes the whole man, Utomi underlies that "freedom is the ability to choose between options within the context of clear principles that lead to the ultimate good of the individual". Freedom, to him, is order, not disorder. HIV test, which is now being carried out in many private and public universities all over the world, is a way of preserving the young human capital.
More ideas are being churned out on how to get maximum benefit from carrying it out.. Surprisingly the University of Chicago, United States, Law Journal reports that there is a move to change the medical standard of practice to default inclusion of HIV testing in every blood with no provision to inform the patient of the right to opt out. For several years Professor Richard Thaler of the same University, has been propounding the "libertarian paternalism" theory aimed at giving both private and public institutions the right to nudge people under their care in the right moral direction, without infringing on their freedom.
Before I am misunderstood, I concur that we must respect the rights of those ravaged by HIV, but we must not be afraid to apply those long-tested principles which make our public institutions tick. After all, why are rusticated secret cult members of our Universities not arguing that their right to freedom of association has been infringed? Why are female students not arguing that the University dress code infringes on their right to dress the way they like? The answers to these queries lie in the fact that no rights exist in vacuo. No freedom is absolute. The State cannot plead neutrality in matters that violate the moral order under the cover of "private morality". We saw where a plea of "private morality" landed United States during reign of Bill Clinton. Nigerian parents are no fools. They want the best for their children. They want a University where character is fostered. They don't want their children to graduate as armed robbers. If they are so desperate to enroll their children in Covenant University, Madonna University or other private Universities, it is an indication that most of our public Universities are rotten from head to toe and cannot offer anything better. NUC, quo vadis?