The Standard Group Plc is a multi-media organization with investments in media
platforms spanning newspaper print
operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a
leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key influence in matters of national and
international interest.
The statue of a child outside the Maendeleo House in the city centre will remain naked, women have said.
Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organisation has said it has no intention of clothing the controversial statue of a child with the mother outside its headquarters on Monrovia Street.
MYWO reaction follows protests by its rival men’s rights organisation, Maendeleo ya Wanaume, which has claimed the statue is of a boy who has been unfairly left nude.
The statue which has been at the entrance of Maendeleo House for decades leaves heads turning due to its naked state from the back, exposing the tender buttocks of child, although the gender is not known.
Maendeleo ya Wanawake National Chairman Rukia Subow told The Nairobian people should not focus on the gender of the child but the intended message revolving around women and their role in society.
“The statue has stood there since the house’s foundation stone was laid more than 30 years ago. It is actually a baby being bathed by her mother… only that we sometimes stop the water from running continuously inside that concrete basin where the child and mother stand,” Subow said at her fourth floor office in the women’s building.
Her counterpart, Maendeleo Ya Wanaume Organisation chairman Nderitu Njoka, has, however, argued that the child is a boy because of the way the mother handles him. “Who said the gender of the child is not clear? It is a boy outrightly! You don’t expect a woman to a hold naked girl but it is common for them not to cloth boys particularly down the waist,” he told The Nairobian.
“It is too sad indeed. I take both of them, boys and girls, as children who require equal assistance and attention, not be discriminated in any way.”
Njoka, the self proclaimed man’s rights defender, has been calling on the government to cloth naked statues around the city, the including naked boy holding fish outside the Supreme Court and a circumcised West African man inside National Archives among others at the National Museums of Kenya.
He has previously told The Nairobian the battle will continue on the floor of Parliament.
