CONTRITION stricken! That was how I frankly felt that day when I saw an old editorial cartoon of mine used as a backup illustration for an article written by our respected former news editor, Mr. Olalekan Ajayi published on the GENDER column of The NIGERIAN OBSERVER in 2006.
Printed pages are very powerful! They live longer than you may think and can go farther than you ever bargained for. If it were a crime I had committed years ago and forgotten I ever did, it would have caught up with me now. But it was a good contribution to knowledge and social reform, i made, years ago in one piece-a satiric illustration.
Having worked with a few NGOs in the state as an art consultant, and of recent exposed to some women’s Rights, NGO’s as a media stakeholder in women and gender matters, I have come to an understanding that I can’t bottle up and keep for my own consumption.
First of all, I concede to my injustice against Nigerian women all these years of my cartoon journalism. The other day, I was taking an inventory of my published editorial/and political cartoons in the newspapers since February 1994 that I first appeared on the editorial cartoon page of The Nigerian Observer titles, and was shocked to discover that 95% of the imageries I used for my cartoons were male figures and masculine symbols only; “well, that’s excusable because it only reflected the reality of the ratio of men and women in the Nigerian political arena who make news,” you may say.
Thank you. But hear the second discovery: the few times I managed to draw females in my cartoons I decisively used to focus on their sexual and immoral excesses without necessarily indicting the men, too. For example,cartooning about women prostitution without mentioning male involvement. What do you say to that? Doing my job of mirroring the society? I disagree.
Now, what really is this GENDER thing, and what is the big deal about the Gender agenda our women are contending for?
We all know that God Almighty didn’t create “gender” as it were, but rather “sex”, that is, male and female. How did we come about this gender thing in the first place? Isn’t it the same way we came about the various “classes” of life and the various “levels” of world that we’ve all been acculturated to from of old?
God Almighty made only one world (the earth) but today we have the ‘third world’ nations, the “second world” nations and the “first world” nations popularly called the “G” nations. God made all human equal but today in Nigeria the society has forced us all to fix ourselves in the so-called “first class”, second-class” or third class” citizens moulds.
That’s how I see this gender thing: God has made the sexes and assigned them their natural or biological roles: men’s bodies to produce sperm and women’s bodies to carry pregnancy, etc. But over time, humanity has contextualized the sexes, beside their biological roles, and assigned them social roles which differ from society to society, time and events, etc.
In other words, “Gender refers to socially given roles, attributes and responsibilities that are related to being male or female in any society,” and “sex differences are basically the biological differences between men and women., sex roles, which are universal and unchangeable, gender roles, attributes and responsibilities are dynamic and context specific as they change over time for different reasons and across generations”.
Now, the big deal about this issue is that gender matters, as I’ve come to catch on, shouldn’t be misinterpreted to refer to women concerns and agitations only. A better understanding of gender concerns will help us journalists balance our stories when writing, photographing or drawing on women issues, etc.
As the fourth estate of the realm and as development catalyst, the role of the media in helping to educate, enlighten and, most importantly, to CONSCIENTIZE modern Nigerian society is of an emergency scale. Apart from dealing with the gross ignorance and indifference of our leaders at all levels- political, traditional or religious — who make the laws, the media owns the onus of religious institutions, office environment sectors and the family which is the nucleus of the society.
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