FGM: Govt dithers as painful ‘initiation to womanhood’ flourishes

This year’s 16 days of activism against gender-based violence ends on Sunday, December 10. With the “Unite! Invest to prevent violence against women and girls,” a lot still needs to be done to protect women and girls in Nigeria, a case in point being the thriving Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), despite the existence of an eight-year-old Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act (VAPP) 2015 Act.

As the rate of violence against women and girls increases exponentially, ENO-ABASI SUNDAY writes that irrespective of the number of laws passed by the National Assembly, the failure of the Federal Government to painstakingly enforce them is tantamount to blinking in the dark, as gender-based violence will continue to flourish.

HOW in the 21st Century some parents, both educated and uneducated are still made to believe that slashing off their daughters’ clitoris prepares them for adulthood, leads to chastity or fidelity in marriage, and generally tame their sexuality/reduce their sexual urge to curb promiscuous living remains a mystery. Not only that, it is also in sharp contrast to what science asserts.

The sole purpose of the clitoris, a key figure in a woman’s erogenous zone is to enable her to reach the peak of sexual pleasure. Indeed, it is the most sensitive part of the vulva, and experts say tampering with it affects the derivation of maximum sexual satisfaction.
Despite being internationally recognised as a violation of the human rights of girls and women, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which has also been criminalised in Nigeria, is still widespread, especially among the less educated parents, who strangely still see it as, among other things, the rite of passage into womanhood, respect for tradition, a religious duty, as well as a facilitator for chastity and fidelity.

Largely viewed by experts as one of the larger problems of reproductive health, FGM traditionally known as female circumcision refers to every procedure that involves the partial, or total removal of the external female genitalia. This practice, the World Health Organisation (WHO), in 2022, admitted has no health benefits for women and girls. Since it is almost always carried out on minors, it is also a violation of the rights of children.

With an estimated 19.9 million survivours, Nigeria accounts for the third highest number of women and girls who have undergone FGM worldwide.
After over 12 years of attempts to make a law against FGM in the country, the President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan-led government finally outlawed the practice in 2015, in what was seen as a major milestone in ending the harmful practice.

READ ALSO: Genital mutilation of young girls sold for dark magic in Ivory Coast

Worryingly, eight years after the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act (VAPP) 2015 (the anti-FGM law, which criminalises mutilation) was passed by the Senate in May 2015, and signed into law by Jonathan, women, and young girls are still being mutilated.
Similarly, 21 years after the Federal Government adopted the Child Rights Act 2003 designed to insulate children and young persons from violence, deprivation, and abuse, the lot of young persons remains gloomy.

Presently, only 13 states- Lagos, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti, Bayelsa, Ogun, Delta, Ebonyi, Oyo, Imo, Edo, Cross River, and Rivers states have state laws that expressly prohibit FGM.

Disturbed by the trend of clandestine circumcision going on around the country, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) during last year’s International Day of Zero Tolerance of FGM, warned that female genital mutilation was rising among Nigerian girls aged 0-14.

It specifically stated that rates have risen from 16.9 per cent in 2013 to 19.2 per cent in 2018, a development that it described as a “worrying trend.”
While the national prevalence of FGM among women aged 15-49 in the country dropped from 25 per cent in 2013 to 20 per cent in 2018, prevalence among girls aged 0-14 increased from 16.9 per cent to 19.2 per cent in the same period, NDHS figures confirmed. An estimated 86 per cent of females were cut before the age of 5, while 8 per cent were cut between ages 5 and 14.

“The practice of FGM not only has no health benefits – it is deeply harmful to girls and women, both physically and psychologically. It is a practice that has no place in our society today and must be ended, as many Nigerian communities have already pledged to do,” said UNICEF Representative in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins, last year.

Last year also witnessed slight variations/disparities in FGM practice across states. For instance, state prevalence ranged from 62 per cent in Imo, to less than one per cent in Adamawa and Gombe.

According to UNICEF, the prevalence of FGM (as of 2022) was highest in the South East (35 per cent); South West (30 per cent), and lowest in the North East (six per cent).
It also summarised that nearly three million girls and women may have undergone FGM in Ebonyi, Ekiti, Imo, Osun, and Oyo states in the last five years.
Early this year in a joint statement by UNFPA-UNICEF to mark the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, the UN groups stressed that the world will miss the target of ending FGM by 2030 without urgent action – including from men and boys
The groups maintained that the latest estimates conclude that this year, 4.3 million girls are at risk of female genital mutilation, even as the number was projected to reach 4.6 million by 2030, as conflict, climate change, rising poverty, and inequality continue to hinder efforts to transform gender and social norms that underpin the harmful practice and disrupt programmes that help protect girls.

While the risk of cutting is still highest in the first five years (86% of girls circumcised before age five – National Demographic and Health Survey 2018), FGM’s prevalence in the country is decreasing among women aged 15-49, according to data from the 2021 Multiple Indicator Survey (MICS) (18 per cent to 15 per cent 2016-17/2021).

Similarly, the prevalence among girls aged 0-14 decreased from 25 per cent to 8 per cent during the same period (MICS 2021).

This significant decrease in prevalence among girls aged 0-14 is a welcome development, given that an estimated 86% of females aged 15-49 were subjected to FGM before the age of five (NDHS 2018). At the same time, 12 states had a prevalence higher than the national prevalence. It ranged from nine per cent in Edo State to 35 per cent in Kwara and Kano states.

Interestingly, recent research by the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research indicates that while overall figures for the period 2018-2021 show a general decline in the practice of FGM in the country, detailed figures indicate that the practice is on the rise in 11 states with Kwara in the lead, followed by Oyo, Ogun, Cross River, Abia, Rivers, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Borno, Katsina, and Adamawa in order of prevalence.

The research, however, added: “There is a general shift from the performance of the most harmful form of FGM (Type III) to the less harmful (Type I) across all the geopolitical zones except in the North East and South South. Also, against the strong call by the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2008) to stop the medicalisation of FGM, figures show that by 2021, trained medical personnel were still at the forefront of undertaking FGM procedures in health facilities in the South West and South East geopolitical zones, while traditional circumcisers predominated in northern zones.

The persistence of the practice of FGM across all zones was largely attributed to age-long perceptions of its marital and other forms of social benefits.
FGM clandestinely thriving due to old beliefs, traditions, religion
NOTHING prepared Mrs. Lucia Chinwe Ezevbigie for the shock that she experienced when she recently visited her in-laws.

Mrs. Ezevbigie, who suffered untold trauma when she was 12 over circumcision, had vowed that none of her children would undergo a similar crude, uncouth tradition called FGM when she grew old, got married, and had female children. It was, therefore, the shock of her life when her in-laws tabled the issue of circumcising her two daughters aged 14 and 16.
Consequently, she suddenly disappeared from the village without a trace, following her in-law’s insistence on circumcising her daughters, an initiative that she had earlier opposed vehemently.

Uncle to Mr. Christopher Ewere Izevbigie (Lucia’s husband), Elder Bennard Izevbigie, who expressed displeasure at the turnout of events said: “You know, in our family and as a matter of fact, the entire community, circumcision of both males and females is a rite that must be performed on the children otherwise, terrible omen would befall us. The females, especially, must undergo such rites otherwise they cannot be given out in marriage. In short, a female child is deemed incomplete and cannot be referred to as such except she is circumcised.

“So, that is what we discussed with our wife when she visited with her children. I think one is 16 the other 14 and both had yet to be circumcised. Our wife was very mad when we brought out the issue, maintaining that she would not allow her children to go through what she went through in her community. Don’t forget that circumcision is an African culture, it is done everywhere especially, among us, the Edos and perhaps, the Igbos.

But you see children of these days now call circumcision Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) because of too much education and learning. To them, our age-long tradition and culture of circumcision is crude and outdated.”

For every Mrs. Ezevbigie who kicks against FGM, many others are subdued by their spouses and in-laws thereby adding new names to the list of over 19.9 million women that have so far been mutilated.
One such is Mrs. Itunu O. A., a fabrics distributor from Osun State, who now resides in Lagos State, after her husband, five years ago, consented to the mutilation of their then four-year-old daughter, Tobilola.

According to her: “Since my husband knew my position about FGM, he surreptitiously liaised with his relatives, especially his mother and his older sister to carry out the circumcision on my baby in the village. I nearly ran mad when I returned from a two-day trip to see my baby writhing in pain after the crude implements infected her.

“I could not forgive him for what he did, and staying with him nearly damaged my mental well-being. The fear that my baby could be emotionally and psychologically damaged for life made me move on.

But I’ve repeatedly let my daughter know that I had no hand in what befell her. This also explains why I want all these cultural practices that inflict untold pains on humans, especially women to be done away with,” she explained.

Blessing, a middle-aged schoolteacher in Akwa Ibom State, is full of regrets over what her now-deceased parents subjected her to. But like Itunu, she thinks the government should share in the blame for not ensuring the effective implementation of laws aimed at ensuring that girls and women are not protected from gender-based violence and cruel practices.

In summarising her trauma, she told The Guardian: “I got married as a virgin with a lot of expectations in my mind, especially given the stories that my friends filled my ears with as a spinster. In other words, I thoroughly wanted to explore the world of sex with my husband, but the bitter truth is that my parents had presented me to a local cutter/quack who chopped off my clitoris leaving me with barely anything down there.

“So, when I did not experience the kind of passion that I thought I would in marriage, I complained to my husband who tried improving his approach to lovemaking, but still no dice. It was when we sought medical attention that it was discovered that my clitoris was practically nowhere to be found, having been slashed off. I did not know how to come to terms with the fact that I would lead a somewhat boring sex life, but that was exactly what I did.

“While my husband vowed that he would do whatever was within his means to make me enjoy sex, he also acceded to my request that if we had female children, none of them would be circumcised. That is why none of my three daughters passed through that madness of a ritual. There is no connection between circumcision upholding a woman’s virtue, or stopping her from being promiscuous as it has been alleged over the years,” she told The Guardian. ‘FGM has no known medical, social benefits to women and girls’A
CONTRARY to age-long perceptions of FGM having marital and other forms of social benefits to women, experts insist none of such claims is true.
In fact, according to the UNFPA, the attendant consequence of FGM are dire, and “complications include severe pain, shock, haemorrhage, tetanus or infection, urine retention, ulceration of the genital region and injury to adjacent tissue, wound infection, urinary infection, fever, and septicemia. Haemorrhage and infection can be severe enough to cause death.
“Long-term consequences include complications during childbirth, anaemia, the formation of cysts and abscesses, keloid scar formation, damage to the urethra resulting in urinary incontinence, dyspareunia (painful sexual intercourse), sexual dysfunction, hypersensitivity of the genital area and increased risk of HIV transmission, as well as psychological effects,” the organisation added.
While traditionalists allege that circumcision among other things, upholds a woman’s virtue, by stopping her from being promiscuous, gender-based violence expert/mental and healing advocate, Elizabeth Bumkeng disagrees.
She said: “While some argue that circumcision upholds a woman’s virtue, the severe emotional and physical trauma experienced by victims contradicts any perceived benefits. It’s essential to highlight the disproven nature of such beliefs and emphasise the importance of respecting an individual’s bodily autonomy.
“Also, “Those who view FGM as a necessary part of raising a girl often prioritise cultural traditions over a girl’s right to sexual enjoyment. Addressing this requires challenging deep-seated beliefs, promoting education on human rights, and fostering a shift in societal attitudes toward gender equality.”
For Damilola Q. Olaoye, of The G-12 Gallant Force Against Harmful Practices: “Cultural or traditional beliefs, like the notion that FGM can curb promiscuity in women, persist due to deeply ingrained cultural practices passed down through generations. Such practices play a pivotal role in shaping individual and community identities, making it challenging to challenge or change established norms. Communities where FGM is prevalent, exert strong social pressure, leading individuals to conform to these norms to avoid ostracisation or stigmatisation. Limited access to information also contributes to the perpetuation of harmful beliefs. In communities with restricted education and awareness, misinformation or lack of understanding about the medical consequences of FGM prevails. Dispelling these beliefs requires comprehensive education campaigns and awareness programmes.
“Beliefs about FGM’s ability to control women’s sexuality are interconnected with broader cultural narratives about purity, honour, and morality. Untangling these beliefs requires a nuanced understanding of cultural contexts and the development of alternative narratives that respect diversity while advocating for the rights of women,” Olaoye added.
“Resistance to external influence is another factor. Communities may resist interventions perceived as imposing foreign values or undermining cultural autonomy. Strategies for change must involve community engagement, collaboration with local leaders, and respect for cultural sensitivity to foster a sense of ownership in the process of change.
Addressing these beliefs requires a comprehensive, culturally sensitive approach that includes community engagement, education, empowerment of women, and collaboration with local leaders. It is crucial to strike a balance between respecting cultural diversity and promoting the well-being and rights of women and girls.”
Government’s failure to enforce the law breeds contempt, encourages abuse
ARTICLE 6 of the VAPP Act 2015 says: “The circumcision or genital mutilation of the girl child or woman is hereby prohibited. A person who performs female circumcision or genital mutilation or engages another to carry out such circumcision or mutilation commits an offense and is liable on conviction to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 4 years or to a fine not exceeding N200, 000 or both.
“A person who attempts to commit the offence provided for in subsection (2) of this section commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 2 years or to a fine not exceeding N100, 000 or both.
“A person who incites, aids, abets, or counsels another person to commit the offence provided for in subsection (2) of this section commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 2 years or to a fine not exceeding N100, 000 or both.
Eight years ago, campaigners against FGM leaped in joy over the passage of the bill to law, as they believed that it would indirectly affect the practice in other African nations where FGM is widely practised and still legal. In-country, campaigners were equally relieved that harmful practices against women and girls would abate, but their relief appear to have been shortlived.
Shedding light on why some laws made by the National Assembly are observed in breach, a senator representing Abia-South Senatorial District, Enyinnaya Abaribe said: “Because we run a federal system of government, any law that is passed must also be domesticated and implemented by the state because certain things like education are not in the exclusive legislative part of the constitution, but in the part of the constitution, which is between the states’ and the Federal Government. So, the states must also pass such laws, failure of which is now looking like the law is not generally accepted. Having said that, let me stress that the welfare of every citizen is the concern of governments (at the federal, state, and local government levels). So, the assumption is that states will not wait to be told to implement laws that are meant for the welfare of their citizens. It’s an aberration that states are now waiting to be prodded into doing what they ought to do for their citizens.
“So, the essential responsibility of a federal lawmaker like me is to make the law and not compel the state lawmaker to implement a federal law. It is also their responsibility. Added to this, we don’t have any compulsive mechanism to make a state do what is right for its citizens. Every governor voted in by citizens of a state is not supposed to be reminded of his/her role in ensuring the well-being of the citizens, through the implementation of laws that are made for that purpose.”
Speaking specifically on the VAPP Act’s failure to end FGM, Abaribe, a former deputy governor of Abia State said: “Now, the only way to stop FGM from going on, as I said, is for state governments to have laws that see such practices as abuse of the girl-child, which should not be continued while also spelling out penalties for failure to conform with the law. If some persons are prosecuted, and jailed, the others will have a change of heart. In this country, there was a time when twins were not welcomed, not just that, one of them must be done away with, now that no longer happens because laws were made, and people prosecuted for defaulting, and that sent a strong message to the rest of the society. From where I come from, I do not think that female genital mutilation still happens because there is so much awareness and advocacy against it. All these have helped in eradicating it. Unfortunately, these traditional practices take a long time before they can be successfully set aside in communities.”
Bumkeng, author of Healing from Within… Reclaiming Life After Sexual and Gender–Based Violence, listed the major factors hindering progress in the fight against FGM in Nigeria including cultural beliefs, lack of awareness, and the deeply rooted traditional practices associated with FGM, added that the absence of effective law enforcement, potential victims of FGM in Nigeria can explore alternative avenues such as seeking support from NGOs, community advocacy, and educational initiatives. These avenues can empower individuals to resist the practice and raise awareness about its lack of proven benefits.”
For Co-founder and CEO of Child Solidarity Group, Emediong Akpabio, flouting national laws with impunity in the guise of the law not being domesticated in states remains a national challenge since these laws have failed to address issues affecting children that they were meant to.
“For instance, suffice to say that the Child Rights Act is not as effective as it should be because states are not even obeying critical sections of it like the establishment of special courts. Just about 10 states have managed to establish special courts and others are still yet to. Unfortunately for them, now, we want this Act to be considered for a review because it has been here for over 20 years and we are still not able to record significant impact from it. With emerging threats to children, the nuisance has just only begun because this Act is not only limited but clearly lacks the capacity it needs to respond to certain sensitivity and threats.”
Child protection laws are some of the most abused and unimplementable laws in the country, how can accountable governance and proper allocation of resources help in addressing this? Akpabio responded: “If more accountability mechanisms are enforced, then we will be able to measure the changes or effect that the laws have on children and the areas that we need to improve on. If accountability is lacking elsewhere, it should never be with children because we owe a duty of care, and moreso, they cannot help themselves.
Emediong stressed: “If Nigeria does not consider the welfare and safety of children as a priority, we might never address the issues of national development. Children who are left to struggle through childhood to adulthood are likely to live in resentment and would completely lose their sense of patriotism. What would matter is how to just survive and no country develops that way.”
Now that the law appears to have failed in addressing FGM comprehensively, Olaoye said several steps must be taken to get out of the woods. He noted that it is important to get support for community-led Initiatives; mount comprehensive education campaigns; ensure the empowerment of women and girls; strengthen legal enforcement, and collaborate with international organisations, NGOs, and human rights bodies
Aggressive awareness creation key to ending FGM, harmful practices against females
BUMKENG, the founder of Bumkeng Selizz Care Foundation believes that aggressive awareness creation is crucial in combating the negative health and psychosocial effects of FGM in Nigeria. By educating communities about the risks and consequences, there is a higher likelihood of discouraging the continuation of this harmful practice.
“Also, involving traditional rulers and religious leaders in awareness campaigns against FGM can be impactful. They can use their influence to challenge and reshape cultural and religious perceptions, emphasising the importance of ending the practice for the well-being of women and girls.
For Olaoye, while legislative measures are essential, there is a growing consensus that a more nuanced strategy, centered on awareness creation and conscientisation, might yield more sustainable and culturally sensitive results.
“Coercive measures, such as legal prohibitions and penalties, undoubtedly send a strong message that FGM is unacceptable and against the law. However, the deeply entrenched nature of cultural practices, especially those tied to rites of passage and identity, necessitates a more holistic approach. Blanket coercive measures may inadvertently lead to resistance, defiance, or even a retreat into clandestine practices, undermining the intended impact,” he added.

QUOTE
Now, the only way to stop FGM from going on, as I said, is for state governments to have laws that see such practices as abuse of the girl-child, which should not be continued while also spelling out penalties for failure to conform with the law. If some persons are prosecuted, and jailed, the others will have a change of heart. In this country, there was a time when twins were not welcomed, not just that, one of them must be done away with, now that no longer happens because laws were made, and people prosecuted for defaulting, and that sent a strong message to the rest of the society.

Those who view FGM as a necessary part of raising a girl often prioritise cultural traditions over a girl’s right to sexual enjoyment. Addressing this requires challenging deep-seated beliefs, promoting education on human rights, and fostering a shift in societal attitudes toward gender equality.