A Nigerian lawyer and civil rights activist and lawyer, Dr Abiola Akiode-Afolabi, has highlighted some loopholes making the laws put in place to tackle the cases of sexual and gender-based violence less effective.
Speaking on Thursday during a live webinar series hosted by Punch Media Foundation, themed ‘Gender-Based Violence in Nigeria: The What, Why and Way Forward’, the CEO of Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre faulted the government, law enforcement agencies, private sector, as well as the media.
A June 2022 report by the United Nations Development Programme said that “Violence and harmful practices against women and girls happen every day in Nigeria, and most of the time they are not reported.”
According to a 2018 survey by the Nigerian Demographic and Health Survey, nine per cent of women aged 15 to 49 had suffered sexual assault at least once in their lifetime and 31% had experienced physical violence.
However, Vanguard in June 2023 quoted a 2019 survey by the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics showing an alarming surge in the number of SGBV cases in the country, 30% of Nigerian women aged 15-49 have experienced physical violence, while a shocking 68% have encountered emotional, economic, or sexual abuse.
Although the Nigerian Government, in 2015, enacted the Violence Against Persons(Prohibition) Act which criminalises various forms of violence and provides avenues for support and justice to survivors, the act has been less effective against SGBV in the country.
Dr Akiode-Afolabi blamed the lesser effectiveness of the law against SGBV on ignorance, the culture of silence, and the absence of reporting mechanisms and sanctions for erring individuals, amongst other causes.
She said, “One of the reasons is because of the ignorance around the law and of course the inequity in society, there’s a power balance issue. There’s also accessibility to the court; it depends on where the court is and where the violence is taking place… Epe to Ikeja(areas within Lagos) might actually be a long way to get to a place of support.
“The culture of silence is also there. The community will also not allow the law to work because the community will want to cover where the law is supposed to take a step to address some of the issues. The issue of victim-blaming and a whole lot of other issues.
“There is also the absence of a reporting mechanism and sanctions for breaking the laws. Even when people are brought forward, there are also no sanctions. The police and other law enforcement agents have some hurdles to break. To a large extent, when cases get to the police, they say there’s no fuel, etc, people get so frustrated and they want to abandon the law and move forward.
“Some of those hurdles allow gender-based violence to continue. There is also bias and misrepresentation in the media. A lot of media coverage is not positive for GBV. Sometimes, the media report an underage and also put the name of the underage which could also cause more stigmatization. There is inadequate data to measure the prevalence and also issues of lack of political will and a whole lot of other things.
“There are laws in the country, it’s not really that we don’t have enough laws that can address GBV because the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act covers a lot of issues including widowhood rights, and rape, and it describes rape differently from what we have in the criminal and penal code. So we have actually gone a long way forward using the law to address the issue.
“There are issues within the public sector, in terms of understanding, and also the private sector. The private sector does not see the need to invest in addressing SGBV as something that’s very important. There are also things happening in the private sphere, for example, sexual harassment in workplaces, which workplaces aren’t taking steps to address. These are some critical issues that are not making the law work appropriately for us.
“There are also problems with the courts. There is a huge congestion and if you don’t have designated courts addressing SGBV, it might become a big problem. The government is not also putting their mouth where their money is. So the question of investing in resources in addressing SGBV also will not make the law work because there is no shelter, shack centres are not in all the states, they’re in very few places so even if there are challenges, nowhere to go. So the government, private sector, media, and public must take responsibility.”
Regardless of the challenges, Dr Abiola Akiode-Afolabi believes that the way forward is for the government, community, private sector and media to form a collective force.
“So the way to address SGBV, the what, how, why and where is coming together as a collective force to address it, use the law effectively, to also use the community to go against SGBV and to also invest resources and do all other things,” she said.
Meanwhile, in November 2023, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons identified an increasing trend of men becoming victims of sexual and gender-based violence in recent times.
NAPTIP Director General, Fatima Waziri-Azi, said, “We have also started seeing new trends. In the past, we never used to get complaints from men. But now, we get complaints from men.
“Even though we know that most of these SGBV issues affect women more, but for the fact that men are reporting and are speaking up. It shows us that attitudes that used to be seen as normal in the past, attitude that used to be tolerated, is no longer tolerated.
“I know that for this year, we have received about 15 complaints from men. These complaints border on physical violence from their partner. It also bothers on women isolating fathers from their children and pushing their husbands out of their shared home.
“This was something that never happened before. In the past I think, men are taught to be strong and internalise issues, but it is gratifying to see that men are speaking up. So this shows that men and boys also go through these issues. The laws are also there to protect them.
“For us at NAPTIP, last year alone, we received about 2,400 cases of SGBV in the Federal Capital Territory, and with figures from January to October, we are closely pushing to the level that we saw last year.
“But one thing I can say for sure, most times when I hear people talking about concerns talking about issues of SGBV. We keep talking about this culture of silence, but I can categorically state that the culture of silence is progressively decreasing, and I say that because we see it in the increase in reportage that we receive as an agency.”
