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Over the past three weeks, there has been a raging
debate on whether INEC has been castrated in its effort to compel
parties to practice internal democracy. In an insightful article, “How the
National Assembly Castrated INEC” (Sunday Trust, 20/2/11), Abdul-Rahman
Abubakar cites comments by the Cross River’s State Resident Electoral
Commissioner that the National Assembly played a trick on them when
they requested the change of dates for the elections. According to the
Commissioner “extraneous clauses were inserted that led to the
castration of INEC.”

Specifically, the National Assembly removed the
previous Section 87 (9) of the Electoral Act which states that “Where a
political party fails to comply with the provisions of this Act in the
conduct of its primaries, its candidate for election shall not be
included in the election for the particular position in issue.”

The lawmakers then introduced a completely new
Section 31(1) which then forbids INEC from rejecting candidates
presented by political parties for any reasons whatsoever. The parties
celebrated this section by conducting primaries in a reckless manner
that completely disregarded the warning from INEC’s Professor Jega that
parties must practice internal party democracy in accordance with the
law.

All reports from the primaries indicated clearly
that godfathers were still in control. In many cases, delegate’s
elections did not take place and candidates were imposed rather than
elected from congresses. Many persons disliked by godfathers were
summarily prevented from contesting for elections. Worse still, so many
people who took part in and won primaries were dropped by party bosses
and substituted by others.

This is an unfortunate development because
political parties constitute the bedrock of multi-party democracy. The
character of legislative, executive and local government institutions
is largely shaped by the ideological platform, objectives and
recruitment procedures of political parties. Indeed political parties
are the single most important institutions in the democratic process.

My view is that party godfathers are celebrating
the so-called castration of INEC too early. Although the new Section
31(1) says INEC cannot refuse a candidate submitted by a political
party, the law makers did not remove the portions of Section 87 that
defined who a candidate is. The definition of a candidate in the Act
remains: “The aspirant with the highest number of votes at the end of
voting shall be declared the winner of the primaries of the party and
aspirant’s name shall be forwarded to the Independent National
Electoral Commission as the candidate of the party, for the particular
State.”

When parties therefore send names to INEC of
people who had not contested in the primaries or had been defeated in
the primaries, the said persons are submitted in contravention of the
provisions of the Electoral Act. I think the attitude of INEC should be
to allow the law to takes its course. The legitimate candidates whose
names have been dropped should go to court to regain their mandate and
hope to benefit from the Amaechi effect.

This is the only option open but is not the best.
The court processes will take a long time and voters will go to the
polls not knowing who will eventually emerge as the legitimate
candidate they are voting for. Although the 2010 Electoral Act as
amended still contains clear directives for the institutionalisation
and enforcement of democratic norms in the functioning of political
parties, politicians have created conditions for subverting it.

It is now clear that the full application of the
Electoral Act 2010, which spells out the path for political parties to
take in upholding the core principles of internal party democracy
including openness, transparency and inclusiveness in their operations,
will now be mediated by the judiciary.

The judiciary is however undergoing a crisis of
confidence as the dog fight between the Chief Justice of the Federation
and the President of the Court of Appeal continues. It is frightening
that the fight is about how parties can use or are using the judiciary
to subvert outcomes of elections. To save our democracy both
individuals must step down immediately and the allegations and counter
allegations investigated. Both individuals cannot preside over their
allegations of corruption. The Chief Justice cannot preside over an
enquiry which emanates from allegations over his own corruption. The
President of the Court of Appeal has serious allegations over his own
conduct and must give way.

Nobody ever said that deepening democracy in
Nigeria was going to be an easy task. The challenges we are facing are
however more complex than many of us imagined. Just when Nigerians were
getting confident that the judiciary was playing a positive role in
adjudicating electoral disputes, the judiciary itself is now being
compromised.

In a sense, the political class continues to misbehave because it
does not really believe that the 2011 elections will be different from
those of 2003 and 2007. It is imperative that Attahiru Jega and his
team in INEC prove them wrong. They must do what it takes to organise
credible elections this year.

I confess: in spite
of my opposition to imposition by political parties, I have a healthy
respect for female candidates who managed to emerge, hurdles and all!

Think Sarah Jibril:
her one solitary vote at the presidential primaries of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP). Even PDP women delegates
omitted/refused/just-couldn’t-be-bothered to vote for Sarah. Add to
that, the time, energy and resources the president’s wife, prior to the
PDP Primaries, had put into mobilising women for these elections. I
thought that PDP women delegates would (at least) have voted for Sarah.
The excuse that the number of women delegates would not have
significantly swung the vote her way is irrelevant. If nothing else was
achieved, it would have shown that women in the president’s party were
listening to Mrs. Jonathan’s message.

I just cannot
imagine what it takes for any woman to emerge first as a candidate, not
to talk of winning or losing the election itself. The amount of money
needed to contest for elections is not for the faint-hearted, we are
told. Aspirants consider it a form of assistance when political parties
jettison or waive hefty nomination fees, as if all flag-bearers
actually paid the stated fees.

As a female, the
most important asset you need is a NAME. It must preferably be
politically heavy, financially able, and socially relevant and
impossible-to-ignore; otherwise, forget it!

Of course, if you
have skin as thick as elephant hide, then you can cope with the names
you will be called and the nude posters of you that will be
electronically generated to titillate.

What should a woman
do when she wants to aspire to even the highest political office, but
everything and anything conspires to curb her ambition? One may not
like the way many emerged without really been tested at primaries, but
then even among the men, how many were truly tested at primaries?
Senator Saraki and Oluremi Tinubu for instance, may never have emerged
as candidates in the course of things, but ONLY because they would
ordinarily not be voted for by men who form the majority in the
parties. Jumoke Akinjide in Oyo State only managed to emerge by the
skin of her teeth!

Saraki for
instance, would never have made it to the House of Representatives
eleven years ago, or the Senate, four years later. We can take that to
the bank because we have since seen how opposed some are to the idea of
a female governor, and not even because she is being allegedly imposed.
That she is now more experienced than her brother, to seek the office
of governor, imposition or not, than her brother could have dreamt of
at the time he became governor eight years ago, is ignored. Why did
those opposed to the Senator accept a less-qualified brother then, yet
ignore her achievements, which now place her in good stead?

We live in a
chauvinistic society; women are treated as second-class citizens, who
until recently, needed their husband’s consent to obtain a passport.
Then, these are not ordinary women but the Biggest Girls. They are a
sight for sore eyes, have great skin, look well-fed and
well-maintained; they are ‘yellow’, fine, educated, stylish, have loads
of clothes and jewellery to die for and do not lower their gaze when
talking to ANYBODY, not even men! Whether they are wives or daughters,
men would never vote for them even in spite of the qualifications that
they possess.

And if one is angry
that their emergence appeared seamless, favoured, imposed, it means one
is angry at the fact of birth or marriage. Shouldn’t one take advantage
of privileges conferred by providence, which political parties would
chauvinistically deprive them of?

As long as women
emerge, should we care how? A process so contrived to ensure that 35%
of seats which ought to be occupied by women, will never be, how fair
is that? Women have to wait until they are appointed before they can
get a look-in! Why? One dearly wishes that all these women actually win
their elections, just to show that Girls Rock!

It would be awesome
if women would come out in droves to vote for deserving women
candidates, I just can’t forget Sarah’s solitary vote!

Well, here’s to
some possible firsts: first elected female governor of a [Northern]
State in Nigeria; the first First Lady of a South-west state in Nigeria
to become a Senator and the first daughter of a former Attorney-General
and Justice Minister to become a Senator; Good Luck to every woman in
the elections!

The upheaval that is sweeping across North Africa does not have a predictable outcome.

US Secretary of State Clinton was recently
praising Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as a loyal friend. In 2009
Clinton said, “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be
friends of my family.” But it seems 30 years of Mubarak was enough for
the people of Egypt.

Secretary Clinton holds a similar view of Gabon’s
President Ali Bongo Ondimba, a “valued partner.” The US supported Ali’s
father Omar who led the country for 43 years before handing over to
Ali. A US Senate report released in February 2010 noted that both
President Omar Bongo and his son Ali have amassed “substantial wealth
while in office, amid the extreme poverty of its citizens.”

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi must be wondering
what has gone wrong this last week. Widespread uprisings have seen
Gaddafi retreat from the Libyan capital amid brutal repression of
protesters. He too has recently been hailed as a “friend of the West”
with visits from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French
President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
It seems the Libyan people have decided that 40 years of Gaddafi is
enough and they are not interested in continuing the reign through
Gaddafi’s son.

Even Saddam Hussein was greeted warmly by Donald
Rumsfeld in the 1980s at a time when Saddam was known to have abused
the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical
weapons on Iranians and his own people. Directives signed by President
Reagan reveal the specific U.S. priorities for the region: preserving
access to oil, expanding U.S. ability to project military power in the
region, and protecting local allies from internal and external threats.
Not much has changed.

Closer to home Liberia was saddled with Charles
Taylor whose close connections with the US ensured he would assume
power and amass considerable wealth. Unfortunately but not
unexpectedly, Charles Taylor’s presidency came at the expense of the
citizens of Liberia who suffered unspeakable human rights abuses at
Taylor’s hands.

Saddam Hussein’s close association with the US was
much like the association between Charles Taylor and the US. Both men
assumed power with the assistance of the US. But, like other US
“friends”, priorities change and friendships soured.

It is little wonder that the citizens of these
countries who have lived under repressive regimes for 30 or 40 years
rise up to throw out such dictatorial, self serving rulers who amass
staggering wealth at the expense of the citizens who often suffered
human rights abuses.

This is the global context to Nigeria’s evolution
as a democratic nation. We hear of many complaints about Nigeria but
there is an abundance of evidence that Nigeria continues to make
progress towards a robust democratic nation. To declare a nation a
democracy can be done in a moment but to demonstrate deeply rooted
democratic instruments of government such as free and fair elections,
transparency in revenue streams from the Federal Government to State
and Local Governments and a judiciary above corruption takes many years
and in many cases a generation. A strong democracy does not come easily
or quickly.

Nigeria is making its own way in the world. It is
not captive of western power brokers seeking oil or a base from which
to project military power. In part this is because Nigeria is as much
Muslim as it is Christian. In part this is also because no one tribe,
political or religious faction has been allowed to dominate. The
jostling of political parties and candidates for the presidency which
often attracts condemnation and can be mistaken for instability is a
dynamic that ensures for every check there is a counter check. This is
a self-correcting mechanism, which nations such as Libya, Egypt, Iraq,
Iran, Bahrain and Tunisia have lacked.

All levels of Nigerian society are engaged in the
politics of their state and nation. The poorest people have opinions on
political parties and candidates every bit as strong and informed as
those of the wealthy and well positioned. This is a robust polity that
will not easily surrender to outsiders.

Nigeria belongs to Nigerians and this is the way it should remain.

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu,
presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria, has published
a monograph on how he would lead Nigeria to a “new Nigeria”. It is
entitled “The Pathway to a New Nigeria.”

To those of us who
do not have the privilege of living in Nigeria, manifestos or
monographs published by Nigerian presidential aspirants give us a sense
of the philosophy and calibre of Nigeria’s potential rulers. Does Mr.
Ribadu’s pathway describe precisely a way for a new and better Nigeria
to emerge over the next few years?

The contours of a
new and better Nigeria seem self-evident. First, it should have the
reputation of being the most honest African country. Second most potent
sign of a new Nigeria would be a prosperous agricultural sector. Third
would be plentiful power supply and an excellent transport
infrastructure. Finally, youth unemployment would be low and personal
disposable income of Nigerians would be high. High disposable income,
implies, a well educated and healthy Nigerian populace sheltered in
modern urban housing.

Let me attempt some
quantification of the self-evident. According to estimates from
Euromonitor and Business Monitor, Nigeria’s nominal 2010 gross domestic
product (GDP) was around 260 billion dollars. Annual disposable income,
which is what we keep in our pockets, was 116 billion dollars or 45% of
its 2010 GDP. I estimate Nigeria’s population to be 160 million. Thus,
Nigeria’s per capita GDP was $1,625, of which only $725 per capita was
available for personal consumption and saving. Ordinary Nigerians will
feel a “new Nigeria” if both the share of Nigeria’s real gross domestic
product converted into disposable income rises from 45% to at least 55%
and Nigeria’s economy flies at an annual rate of 8%. Then, by 2016, per
capita GDP would be $2,579 and per capita disposable income would have
almost doubled to $1,418.

A doubling of disposable income in 5 years is my new and better Nigeria.

Mr. Ribadu’s
pathway proposes that a “people, process and equipment model” be
“adopted to reintroduce efficiency to primary health care”. Six new
super specialist hospitals focusing on the heart, kidney, cancer,
children, women, and neurosurgery are to be constructed in the six
geopolitical zones of Nigeria. He promises to increase Nigeria’s
federal educational expenditure to 26% of the national budget.

One striking policy
is the injection of “Western education” into the Sangaya system of
education. He also proposes a primary and secondary school commission
to regulate primary and secondary schools and improve the shockingly
low performance of Nigerian students.

Mandatory social
security for all Nigerians will be enacted. Mr. Ribadu seeks fiscal
prudence. Therefore, he intends to reduce the national deficit from 6%
of GDP to the 3% of GDP level maintained between 2003 and 2007.
Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves are to be rebuilt from its current
$38 billion to at least $50 billion.

In the area of
governance, Mr. Ribadu urges the conduct of free, fair, and credible
elections as a way of combating corruption because they force public
office holders to be accountable to Nigerian voters.

The Niger Delta’s
problems are to be tackled by, among other policies, employing
competent and knowledgeable officials in the Niger Delta Commission.
The power supply deficits are to be addressed through the use of
coal-fuelled power plants. His goal is to “stabilise power generation,
transmission and distribution in the shortest possible time.” Private
railway operators will be allowed to use government owned railway
tracks. All gaps in the food chain are to receive “appropriate
attention” and farmers are to get grants and loans.

Mr. Ribadu’s
manifesto is full of good intentions! But, I doubt it will lead to my
new Nigeria anytime soon. It has too few measurable commitments.

How can we agree on
what constitutes “the shortest possible time” for stabilising “power
generation”? Impossible! Promising aid and finance to farmers is simply
not a policy for raising agricultural productivity, a prerequisite for
a prosperous rural sector. No discussion of irrigation schemes,
lowering the cost of fertilisers, or introducing improved seeds. How
exactly does a “people, process and equipment model” improve primary
care efficiency? I have no idea.

Yet, the pathway
has one quiet virtue: its call for the conduct of free and fair
elections. They are long overdue. Without them, the old Nigeria lives.
A Ribadu pathway to honest elections will open the gates to a new
Nigeria. Sadly, it fails to delineate a way to a better Nigeria.

It’s probable that
when Barack Obama first announced his intention to run for President of
the United States of America, many people must have said: “He’s crazy”,
or “he must be mad!” And perhaps you do have to be a bit crazy to stand
up and ask people to vote for you. Or brave, if one considers that
bravery is an aspect of craziness.

But as George
Bernard Shaw observed, since the reasonable man tries to adapt to the
world as it is, progress depends on unreasonable men who try to change
the world.

So if we’ve been
seeing a bit of craziness on the Arab street recently, we need to
remember how crazy you need to be to risk imprisonment, torture, injury
and death to even think of joining protests whose goal is to change an
oppressive status quo.

But in Libya, the
mad bravery of the people is being matched by the murderous craziness
of the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, Muammar Gaddafi.
Or how else can we describe the collective madness of the family at the
top that threatened its own citizens with civil war?

The decision to
use ‘African’ mercenaries to mow down Libyans in their own country had
of course, a measure of ruthless calculation. Just as Gaddafi is said
to have surrounded himself with female bodyguards because he hoped that
any would-be assassin might hesitate to shoot a woman in order to get
at him, he also apparently knew that many of his security forces might
hesitate to butcher their fellow-citizens.

If that was cold calculation however, the use of fighter jets to bomb his own capital reeks of mad desperation.

Perhaps at the
beginning, Gaddafi’s crazy idea that he could become Libya’s head of
state was as inspiring and infectious as Obama’s. But the sad reality
is that power tends to corrupt. That applies even to a US President
governing with a hostile Congress. As ex-president, Bill Clinton said,
explaining the fundamental reason why he indulged himself in the
Lewinsky affair: I did it because I could. The American system though
(like ours), limits the powers of its commanders-in-chief, not just
that pesky Congress and the courts: if even those fail (as they were in
danger of doing in the heat of the post-9/11 era under President George
W. Bush) there is also a term limit. These all combine to arrest the
tendency of power to corrupt.

Libya however illustrates the effect of power that lacks any of those checks.

The world has been
rightly horrified at the excesses of the Libyan dictator and his sons
(who only seem reasonable in comparison to the ghastly brood of Saddam
Hussein of Iraq and if one forgets Hannibal Gaddafi, arrested in
Switzerland for beating up his domestic staff).

It is noticeable
that the African Union, despite the African Charter on Human and
Peoples Rights, has been rather slow to condemn Gaddafi’s breaches of
that treaty. After all, even the Arab League found its voice to condemn
him, and even mild-mannered Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary-General of the
United Nations didn’t wait for the Security Council’s go-ahead before
denouncing the violence being used against protesters. What is more it
is in Africa that Gaddafi has fomented most trouble, especially since
he made peace with the West over Lockerbie and abandoned the pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction.

(The least said
about Nigeria’s silence the better. We must be grateful that President
Goodluck Jonathan is at least talking about rescuing Nigerians stranded
in Libya, although obviously the nine or so presidential jets can’t be
spared from essential election campaign duty and anyway, would hardly
dent the huge numbers involved.) Still, considering that there are
fewer sit-tight elongated-tenure rulers on the continent than those who
came to power after 2000, it’s difficult to understand the AU’s
reticence. Maybe the habit of subservience to the
mischief-maker-in-chief is too ingrained. Or perhaps it’s all those oil
dollars that he didn’t spend improving life for his own people. The
US$18,000 per day reportedly paid to those ‘African’ mercenaries is
only the latest in a stream of filthy lucre flowing from the Brotherly
Guide’s pockets, and even some democratically elected leaders (as well
as some unsuccessful candidates) will be uneasily hoping that records
of Gaddafi’s campaign contributions will not be exposed by any new
reformist administration in Libya.

Which must surely
come: the writing is on the wall for the Libyan dictator. With Gaddafi
having lost control of half the country at the time of writing, one is
irresistibly reminded of the interpretation of PERES in the original
writing on the wall (MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN): Thy kingdom is
divided … But the more unreasonable behaviour we see from Gaddafi and
his sons: the threatening incoherence of Saif, while from the father we
have had the loopy umbrella appearance, the ranting ‘I will die a
martyr’ speech, and the ‘demonstrators are smoking something’ (!)
allegation, it is also relevant to remind ourselves that TEKEL meant
“You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.” Or – in
keeping with the desert Arab zeitgeist – a palm tree short of an oasis:
Not quite all there.

There can’t be many Nigerians out there who think
that the Nigerian judiciary managed to escape the epic decline that has
become the story of Nigeria’s government institutions. But the recent
revelations from the very public falling out between the Chief Justice,
Aloysius Katsina-Alu, and the President of the Court of Appeal, Ayo
Salami, have taken the justice system’s reputation to record lows.

Justice Salami, in a recent petition to President
Jonathan, and the National Judicial Council, alleged that the Chief
Justice attempted to unduly influence him in the judgement concerning
the 2008 Sokoto State governorship re-run elections, and has also made
plans to “promote” him from the Court of Appeal so as to leave the
position of president vacant for a more pliable person.

This is not the first time that allegations of
impropriety would be levelled against senior members of the Nigerian
judiciary. In 2004 an anonymous organisation, the Derivation Front,
based in Delta State, accused the Supreme Court of receiving N5 billion
in bribes from the then governor of Delta State, James Ibori, who was
battling allegations that he was an ex-convict and thus not qualified
to be governor in the first place.

A decade before then, something unprecedented in
the history of the Nigerian judiciary had happened. It also had to do
with hints of material inducement to alter the course of justice. The
justices of the Supreme Court sued the Weekend Concord for libel, after
the paper reported that President Babangida had secretly bought
Mercedes Benz limousines for them all, and that it wasn’t clear whether
the cars were given to them in an official or private capacity. (We
ended up with a scenario in which the nine Justices of the Supreme
Court filed a libel suit against a newspaper at a High Court).

The difference however, between the
Katsina-Alu/Salami case and its predecessors is that in the current one
the allegations are not coming from outside. This is not a case of an
expose by a newspaper or a faceless organisation. This is the President
of the Federal Court of Appeal accusing the Chief Justice of the
Federation, of working to subvert the course of justice. At times like
these one is tempted to invoke Fela’s “Confusion Break Bone.” As it
happens with these revelations, where muck is easily predisposed to
begetting more muck, we are learning more by the day. In simple
English, this is the situation as it currently stands: The PDP believes
that Justice Salami is an ACN sympathiser, while the ACN believes that
Justice Katsina-Alu, and Justice Thomas Naron (who presided over the
Osun State Election petition tribunal whose decision Salami’s Court
upturned, and who, like Salami now stands accused, through leaked phone
records, of being in suspiciously close contact with litigants) are
ruling party men.

And what do the ordinary people of Nigeria
believe? That it is finished for the judiciary. Need we point out that
once citizens come to that conclusion, they will not hesitate to
completely turn their backs on the courts and seek redress for their
grievances by other means.

The extent of the mess beggars belief. But the
immediate solution is clear. To salvage the already battered reputation
of the judiciary, both Justices should immediately resign their
appointments. Nothing less than a total relinquishing of power by
Justice Katsina-Alu and Justice Salami – best seen as career hara-kiri,
the face-saving Japanese ritual suicide form associated with the
exposure of a shameful act – will suffice in this case.

No excuses are tenable. The National Judicial
Council must go ahead to thoroughly investigate all the allegations.
The probe must be extended to exhume the allegations levelled against
Justice Naron.

Justice, Wole Soyinka said, decades ago, is the
first condition of humanity. Indeed it is. Things are no longer normal
when we have to start qualifying the word “justice” with words like
“true” or “genuine”; justice ceases to be justice as soon as it is up
on offer to the highest bidder, or as soon as those entrusted with it
can no longer convince us that they are above betraying it.

While delivering judgement in a murder trial in
which much pressure had been put on him to exert the course of justice,
a certain Mr. Justice Oyemade was quoted by the Daily Times as saying,
in July 1965: “The only thing we have now in this country is the
judiciary. We have seen politicians changing from one policy to another
and one party to another. But the only protection the ordinary people
have against these inconsistencies is a fearless and upright
judiciary.” Four and half decades later, we affirm that those ideals
remain unassailable.

Thousands of men blocked the road, surrounding the SUV of the
chief justice of Pakistan, a national hero for standing up to military rule. As
a correspondent for The Chicago Tribune, I knew I couldn’t just watch from
behind a car window. I had to get out there.

So, wearing a black headscarf and a loose, long-sleeved red
tunic over jeans, I waded through the crowd and started taking notes: on the
men throwing rose petals, on the men shouting that they would die for the chief
justice, on the men sacrificing a goat.

And then, almost predictably, someone grabbed my buttocks. I
spun around and shouted, but then it happened again, and again, until finally I
caught one offender’s hand and punched him in the face. The men kept grabbing.
I kept punching. At a certain point – maybe because I was creating a scene – I
was invited into the chief justice’s vehicle.

At the time, in June 2007, I saw this as just one of the realities
of covering the news in Pakistan. I didn’t complain to my bosses. To do so
would only make me seem weak. Instead, I made a joke out of it and turned the
experience into a positive one: See, being a woman helped me gain access to the
chief justice.

And really, I was lucky. A few gropes, a misplaced hand, an
unwanted advance – those are easily dismissed. I knew other female
correspondents who weren’t so lucky, those who were molested in their hotel
rooms, or partly stripped by mobs. But I can’t ever remember sitting down with
my female peers and talking about what had happened, except to make dark jokes,
because such stories would make us seem different from the male correspondents,
more vulnerable. I would never tell my bosses for fear that they might keep me
at home the next time something major happened.

I was hardly alone in keeping quiet. The Committee to Protect
Journalists may be able to say that 44 journalists from around the world were
killed last year because of their work, but the group doesn’t keep data on
sexual assault and rape. Most journalists just don’t report it.

The CBS correspondent Lara Logan has broken that code of
silence. She has covered some of the most dangerous stories in the world, and
done a lot of brave things in her career. But her decision to go public earlier
this week with her attack by a mob in Tahrir Square in Cairo was by far the
bravest. Hospitalised for days, she is still recuperating from the attack,
described by CBS as a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating.

Several commentators have suggested that Logan was somehow at
fault: because she’s pretty; because she decided to go into the crowd; because
she’s a war junkie. This wasn’t her fault. It was the mob’s fault. This attack
also had nothing to do with Islam. Sexual violence has always been a tool of
war. Female reporters sometimes are just convenient.

In the coming weeks, I fear that the conclusions drawn from
Logan’s experience will be less reactionary but somehow darker, that there will
be suggestions that female correspondents should not be sent into dangerous
situations.

It’s possible that bosses will make unconscious decisions to
send men instead, just in case. Sure, men can be victims, too – on Wednesday a
mob beat up a male ABC reporter in Bahrain, and a few male journalists have
told of being sodomised by captors – but the publicity around Logan’s attack
could make editors think: “Why take the risk?”

That would be the wrong lesson. Women can cover the fighting
just as well as men, depending on their courage.

More important, they also do a pretty good job of covering what
it’s like to live in a war, not just die in one. Without female correspondents
in war zones, the experiences of women there may be only a rumor.

Look at the articles about women who set themselves on fire in
Afghanistan to protest their arranged marriages, or about girls being maimed by
fundamentalists, about child marriage in India, about rape in Congo and Haiti.
Female journalists often tell those stories in the most compelling ways,
because abused women are sometimes more comfortable talking to them. And those
stories are at least as important as accounts of battles.

There is an added benefit. Logan is a minor celebrity, one of
the highest-profile women to acknowledge being sexually assaulted. Although she
has reported from the front lines, the lesson she is now giving young women is
probably her most profound: It’s not your fault. And there’s no shame in
telling it like it is.

Kim Barker, a reporter
for the investigative journalism website ProPublica, is the author of the
forthcoming memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and
Pakistan

© 2011 The New York Times