By Vera Chinonso Aliyu, YeyeNews.com, December 25, 2021
The female soldier Hannah Sofiat A. arrested for accepting the proposal of an NYSC member has told YeyeNews.com that the army is detaining her because she refused to sleep with a General but instead was kissing a corps member publicly. “I am in the guardroom not because I committed any crime. I know that a top General is behind my ordeal. The General feels hurt that I could turn down his advances but agreed to a proposal from an NYSC member”, the soldier told her best friend who visited her in detention.
The Nigerian army was reported to have arrested the soldier after photos of her kissing her NYSC boyfriend went viral. They accused her among other things of an “unauthorized acceptance of marriage proposal”. But multiple anonymous sources in the military has argued that the soldier did nothing wrong in accepting marriage from a civilian. “Both the soldier and her boyfriend are both adults. What kind of authorization does an adult require to accept a marriage proposal? This does not make sense. There is something we don’t yet know about”, a military source claimed.
Another source who was a former camp commandant in an NYSC Orientation Camp queried: “Why would there be a problem when a female soldier accepts to marry a Corps member? Hardly any year passes without a male soldier tying the knot with a female corpse member. In fact many male soldiers look forward to the NYSC camp to meet their future wives. That is the reality. Soldiers have very limited space to engage with civilians outside the three weeks orientation camp of the NYSC. The army authorities should release the female soldier because she has done no wrong. This discrimination against women soldiers has to stop”.
