Anita Hogan: An Apologia.

In a society where women are regarded and treated as houseslaves and where additionally the frei körper culture is yet to be consummated, voyeurism is the rule rather than the exception. The eyes of the voyeur, this sick animal that luxuriates in feasting on other people's acts of intimacy, are, unfortunately, ubiquitous. Lovers no longer have any hiding place, husbands and wives no longer have any sense of privacy, laptops no longer have any personal usability, boxers' shorts and G-strings have suddenly become collectors' items. And to imagine that a section of the Fourth Estate of the Realm, the mirror of the society, is enmeshed in the vortex of this voyeuristic fetishism, is indeed discombobulating. It displays a lack of proper understanding of the historical role played by women in the life creation process.

Poor Anita has attracted opprobrium to herself, albeit innocently, and the disvalue of her action of storing images of herself and her inamorata's in the nude on the hard drive of her PERSONAL computer has led to the disparagement of her person on the pages of newspapers. I am happy that the Church, that veritable institution of inveterate Tattufery of morals, has not waded into this matter. Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone. Is it not worthy to note that the whole time Adam and Eve were naked in the garden, they never for once drew God's ire? But the very moment they decided to cover their nakedness was the same instant that God had them expelled from Eden. Was Eden then a nudist colony and God a voyeur? God is and remains the Great Unseen and the Unseen Watcher and Eden was definitely nature at its best. Now here lies the paradox. Adam and Eve -- the mythical names we have given to represent First Man and First Woman -- were naked the whole time until they partook of the knowledge of good and evil. What has been described as the fall of Adam was actually his upliftment --the greatest single event in the history of humankind. For without it, the world of relativity would not exist. The act of Adam and Eve was not original sin, but in truth, first blessing.

Coming to the story of Anita, all she did was to take pictures of herself in nature, within the SAFE confinements of her apartment. The only other person that was present was of course not a television crew or a pornograph shooting outfit, but her lover. Her naivety was in taking her laptop to a technician for repairs without first of all deleting the pictures. She ought to have known better, afterall she is a Nigerian living in Nigeria where anything can happen. The technician and his gang of criminals, voyeurs par excellence, managed to obtain these pictures and circulated them round some media houses because Anita refused to submit to their blackmail. And one of these media organisations responsible for the publication of a seedy and junk newspaper that was already notorious for its journalistic vagabondage, decided to publish the PRIVATE pictures for PUBLIC consumption.

Nobody, I repeat, virtually nobody has come to the defence of this hapless creature, who in the course of time has had to be hospitalised and treated for traumatic depression, and had even experienced a double miscarriage: a miscarriage of justice and a miscarriage of her pregnancy. Almost everybody has been calling for her blood -- her colleagues in Nollywood, the womenfolks, the menfolks, etc. And I see some jealousy in all this spate of condemnations. Male jealousy: " Ha ha, served her right. She didn't consider any of us rather than this uncircumcised caucasian good enough for her." Female jealousy. The women are saying the same thing because the caucasian lover had picked Anita out of the pack. But I am cocksure that if Anita had taken those pictures with a nigerian boyfriend, the whole spectacle would have been dead and buried for good without even providing the comic relief it has so far provided to the pathetic state of the nation in which our leaders are as bad as their followers. I am also quite sure that Anita did not pose in the nude because her boyfriend was white; she would have done the same thing if she had a Nigerian boyfriend. To cut a long story short, she did it for love. I know many Nigerians out there who will not do such a thing for love's sake, but just to satisfy their concupiscence. There is this notorious abortionist who will not terminate an unwanted pregnancy without first of all going to bed with the patient with a camera at hand. What is love? Maybe love is that longing which dwells in the hearts of men for that thing in women which makes the former conscienceless and uncontrollable. Maybe not.