ABUJA – The Global Prolife Alliance, an NGO, has urged stakeholders to carefully scrutinise the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Bill before it is finally passed into law by the National Assembly.
Dr Philip Njemanze, the Chairman of the group made this call while speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja.
Njemanze was speaking against the backdrop of the public hearing on VAPP Bill being proposed for passage by the Senate.
He said that there was need for a thorough scrutiny and definition of each of the subjects brought before the senate for hearing, saying “most of them have undertones of foreign manipulations.’’
“When you are drafting a bill you have to define the main subject of that bill, prohibition of violence against persons, who is a person? That must be clearly defined.
“Medically life begins at conception so when we are defining life we must say the person is any person who is conceived from conception to natural death.
“Whatever we are going to say in the bill should address who a person is, the punishments of the violators and the funding of the trial of violators,’’ Njemanze said.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”10″]
On the bill on marriage, the medical practitioner said that a clear distinction was not drawn on the type of marriage, this according to him was not right.
“When you look at the bill you will find out that there are so many fuzzy words used like nature of marriage, what is nature of marriage?
“Nature of marriage is another word for civil union and civil union can be type of union, it can be a man and a man, it can be a woman and a woman or a man and a woman.
“In order to make it more sophisticated, it should identify or give a clear explanation of what is marriage.
“A marriage as a union of a man and a woman is not written in the bill so it leaves you to interpret the nature marriage in any union.
“So it has to be defined very clearly, so if you pass this bill in its present form you have legalised same sex marriage so it is another back way because foreigners are funding this bill.
The chairman said that since the country had a law prohibiting same sex marriage, he argued that this was another way foreigners want to impose the practice on the nation.
He, therefore, urged all stakeholders to take a step by step approach to examine each item and come out with a better and stronger law protecting not just women but all citizens.
Njemanze said that the bill if passed the way it was drafted, would prohibit the use of the holy Bible and the Quran in public places.
“This bill defines in very vague terms what is psychological injury, psychological effects on humans or persons.
“You can say I was psychologically harmed, for example if your Bishop or your Imam is preaching and says adultery and fornication is bad.
“His quoting from the Bible and the holy Quran and now you as a woman or man can claim that you have psychological injury.
“Because you were just involved in adultery, you can file a law suit based on this bill against him and that Bishop or Imam will go in for three years imprisonment,’’ he said.
Njemanze said that this would destroy the little moral virtue or principles left in the Nigerian society.
He said that the bill if not critically defined and exemptions made would also destroy the traditional and religious structures in the country, making it vulnerable to injurious foreign cultures.
“If you must pass the VAPP bill, please go through it section by section and do what we told you to do, if you do it you will have a bill that actually can help outline marriage and violation issues against women and other vulnerable groups very well,’’ he said. (NAN)
