In Nigeria, 43% of girls are married off before their 18th birthday. 17% are married before they turn 15. FOURTY-THREE PERCENT. The prevalence of child marriage varies widely from one region to another, with figures as high as 76% in the North West region. This is all according to the girlsnotbrides website, a website dedicated to ending child marriage and uplifting women’s rights.
This is just one of the many struggles faced by Nigerian women on a regular basis.
The Nigerian senate recently voted against a bill on Gender Equality in Marriage. The bill was passed to open up the conversation on issues surrounding women’s freedom of movement, female economic activity, girls’ access to education, equal rights for women in marriage, divorce, property/land ownership and inheritance, appropriate measures against gender discrimination in political and public life and the prohibition of violence towards women. So basically if youre a woman in Nigeria its perfectly legal for you to be treated unequally and like a second hand citizen using the excuse, and I quote “There are various traditions. The problem we have is the combination of our traditions and new religious beliefs.. The church wedding says if you marry, the couple become one, while the Igbo tradition says when you marry a wife, she becomes your property,”
The first question I asked myself when I saw this was “ Why are womens right even a debatable topic!?” Which brings me to the topic of male entitlement in Nigeria. The Nigerian senate consists of 108 seats and of those seats only 7 are taken by women. And so basically about 80 or so men decided that it was their choice on how women should live their lives and be treated. Clear example of Nigerian males thinking that women’s lives should be policed by men.
Degrading women is in Nigeria’s culture from the senate to music. The great musical legend of Nigeria, Fela Kuti said on his most famous songs “Lady” where he basically bashes women who in any way try to be equal to men (its got a nice beat though). Just some of the many mysoginistic lyrics in the song:
“She go say him equal to man
She go say him get power like man
She go say anything man do himself fit do”
“African woman go dance
She go dance the fire dance
African woman go dance
She go dance the fire dance
She know him man na master
She go cook for am
She go do anything he say.”
Did you know that marital rape is legal in Nigeria? So basically if you manage to get a woman to marry you, she basically becomes your sexual “toy” and you can just use her for sex as many times and whenever you want even when she declines it and the authorities wouldn’t bat an eye, just because they’re trying to preserve these so called “traditions”.
In a 2013 poll of 585 randomly selected adults from six Nigerian geopolitical zones by NOI Polls, 34% answered ‘What do you think is the most prevalent cause of rape in the society?’ with ‘indecent dressing’. 29% said they personally knew a victim of rape.
Let me address this in simple terms so everyone reading this will understand. RAPE IS RAPE, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT SHE IS WEARING OR WHETHER OR NOT SHES DRUNK OR MARRIED TO YOU NO MEANS NO. Somehow these simple instructions don’t seem to be understood by Nigerian men. I’ve even had fellow classmates say to me “If I spend so much money on a date and she doesn’t let me fuck ill ask her to return all my money back.” Spending money on a girl doesn’t mean automatic sex.
Out of a sample of 295 female students from Ebonyi State University Abakaliki in Southeast Nigeria, 36.7% had experienced sexual harassment/victimization at least once on campus. Of this, 32.4% had been raped (10.8% of the sample).
This is 2016 and the fact that this still happens make me feel very ashamed to call myself a Nigerian. So, Nigerian government instead of treating women as male property why not teach women to be able to be themselves and live their lives like their male counterparts and teach the males that females are not and will never be their property. Just an idea though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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