A 2021 report by the World Health Organisation estimated that 736 million women–one out of three women– have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their lives.
Nsini Christina was 27, an age when women in Nigeria usually come under sustained societal pressure to get married. But this was not her priority at the time.
After twice failing the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board exams, gaining admission into a university was top of her mind.
On her third try, she was eventually accepted into the University of Calabar in Southern Nigeria. This ecstatic moment was short-lived however as the Academic Staff Union of Universities embarked on a five-month strike. This made her consider a marriage proposal from her now-former husband.
After he agreed to allow her to continue her education when her school resumed, they got married in July 2000 and moved to Kubwa in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital.
Turbulent marriage
A few months into the marriage, a lady told Ms Christina that the latter’s husband had physically assaulted her.
“When he returned home, I told him about the matter and I asked him if he beats women.
“He told me to forget it, that he would never beat me”, Ms Christina narrated in a phone interview with PREMIUM TIMES. She dismissed the matter from her mind but later realised she shouldn’t have.
In 2001, he began to beat her. Shocked by the unexpected behaviour, she reported him to her pastor, expecting the pastor “to pray and cast out the demon” in her husband.
But the pastor instead advised her to return to her parents’ house, warning that the abuse would continue. It did, but she stayed with the hope that he would change.
This was the best intervention the church could provide for her because it lacked resources or guidelines to help members in such relationships.
“I started fasting and doing midnight prayers while laying hands on his properties. Sometimes while cooking and I add salt, I will say ‘as this salt is going to give taste to this food, my marriage will be tasteful.’ I was making declarations thinking things would change but they never did”, Ms Christina narrated.
She did not inform her parents of the beatings because she thought it was something she could handle. Her parents had never needed external help to resolve any differences they might have had, she thought.
Unfortunately for Ms Christina, the beatings continued.
On a Sunday afternoon in January 2006, after finishing her duties as a worker in the counselling unit of her new church, Dunamis International in Kubwa, Ms Christina returned home. An argument between them soon led to her husband beating her again.
Despite suffering a dislocated wrist, she wanted to keep the assault to herself but for her sister who witnessed and reported it to the church. With the help of her church, she was treated and given some money to return to her parents. She stayed there for three months but returned home following repeated apologies from her husband.
Ms Christina is one of the millions of women worldwide who suffer from intimate partner violence.
A 2021 report by the World Health Organisation estimated that 736 million women–one out of three women worldwide– have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their lives.
According to the report, intimate partner violence perpetrated by spouses or partners affects more than 640 million women aged 15 and older.
Many of those women, like Ms Christina, for different reasons, choose to remain with their abusive partners.
But Ms Christina says she has learnt her lesson.
“Now, I see it as foolishness but then I wanted him to see it as a sacrifice and for him to treat me better,” the 47-year-old survivor said. He resumed his habit in 2008 and continued whenever there was a quarrel.
The journey to the end
In 2012, push came to shove when her husband joined a cultural fraternity–Ogboni— and insisted that she and the children join him in it, “to complete the cycle”, an activity she thought was part of his initiation rite.
For Ms Christina, this was an absolute no because he had boasted severally about an imminent ‘breakthrough’ and she was unsure how he intended to achieve it.
According to a leader of the Reformed Ogboni Fraternity, Francis Meshioye, in 2019, the group was created to promote positive values, justice and cultural heritage.
This was corroborated by two scholars who gave an extensive insight into the fraternity. While they noted that the secret society does not use violence, they however said their initiation rituals would involve some mystical elements, as portrayed in Ms Christina’s narration when her former husband indicated an interest in joining the group.
The academicians disclosed that members of the fraternity are sworn to secrecy, which is why people are afraid of the group.
They further revealed that membership in the cult is for networking and improving one’s financial position or power.
On March 31, 2012, Ms Christina’s husband returned home drunk at about 11 p.m, picked up some items, and left the house. He returned at 3 a.m. and demanded sex from her, but she refused.
“That was how the beating started again. He kept saying ‘I will kill you and bury you and no one will question me. I called for help but nobody responded,” she recounted, corroborating a previous interview with Vanguard.
He left her to get his sword which he used to strike her back, hand and leg while aiming for her neck. She slumped and pretended to gasp for her last breath, then laid still. He fled from the house, thinking she was already dead.
Writhing in pain, she dragged herself from a pool of her blood, jumped through a window and limped to her neighbours’ house. They tried getting a vehicle to convey her to the hospital but none was available as it was 4:30 a.m.
Another neighbour on her street took her in his car to a clinic. She got admitted after approval from the Divisional Police Officer in the area.
After the police had detained her husband for a week, she asked for him to be released because she could not pursue the case and was relocating to her parents’ house.
Although she asked for the case to be withdrawn, the police can decide to continue it, a human rights lawyer, Peter Kefas, told PREMIUM TIMES.
“It is no longer at the prerogative of the survivor once it is established that the violence took place. It is a crime now and a crime against the state,” Mr Kefas said.
He, however, said the police were wrong to release the accused but added that the survivor can still pursue the case whenever she is ready.
Raped by a family friend
While Ms Christina experienced domestic violence, Priye Diri was nearly raped by a close family friend.
In 2017, Ms Diri left Port Harcourt, Rivers State, for Lagos State to search for a job. The family friend invited her to stay with him until her life picked up.
One day after she had gone to bed early, the family friend entered her room at 1 a.m. and started to touch her. She screamed for help as she struggled to break free from him. But the more she struggled, the more emboldened he became. She was eventually rescued by a mutual friend in the house who rushed into the room and pushed the abuser away from her.
“That day, I cried profusely because I kept asking myself if there is something on my head that says ‘rape her’ because I had just come out of an experience where I was sexually violated”, she said.
Data from the 2018 Demographic Health Survey extracted by Dataphyte indicates that more than 17 million Nigerian women have experienced sexual violence.
Intimate partner violence in Nigeria (2013-2018)
Rising above trauma
While finding her feet as a single mother, a friend linked Ms Christina with Josephine Effah-Chukwuma, the Executive Director of Project Alert, a non-governmental organisation helping women dealing with gender-based violence.
Ms Effah-Chukwuma offered her a job in July 2012 to work as the administrator of the first-ever GBV shelter in Nigeria.
This shelter, called Sophia’s place, located in a suburb of Lagos (the exact location can not be made public for the safety of the women survivors), has housed over 1000 individual women, girls and children since it started operating in 2001. It can accommodate eight families at a time.
As the administrator, Ms Christina uses her experiences to encourage women facing similar predicaments to speak out. “I use my story to show them that they are not alone in what they are going through, that they too can overcome, and to serve as a source of support,” she said.
Apart from providing GBV survivors with a safe space, the NGO has over the years introduced several programmes to fight the prevalence of GBV in Nigeria, such as involving community-based organisations and selected residents to serve as first responders to tackle the menace in the state.
“I tell the women the road is not rosy but it is about determination and the peace that comes, knowing that you can go to sleep and wake up every day without being afraid of being assaulted,” she said.
Like Ms Christina, Ms Diri also got help. But this time, from Dorothy Njemanze, an Abuja-based gender advocate whom she had earlier met while working on a short film on sexual violence.
Ms Diri now works as the Programme Manager of Dorothy Njemanze Foundation which has a 24- hour response service to rescue survivors and also operates a shelter for GBV survivors in Abuja.
Before it was established, survivors were housed in hotels which the organisation paid for with the support of external donors. The shelter was eventually set up with the help of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), which funded its construction and has been providing support.
The shelter was established in August 2020, following increased GBV cases during the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria. It has been a safety net for 193 women, girls and children.
These two shelters are part of 21 recognised public and privately run GBV shelters in Nigeria, according to a recent publication released on March 8 2022 by Invictus Africa in partnership with OSIWA and some Nigerian government agencies.
To find healing, Ms Diri encourages the women and girls not to lose hope but to forge a new path beyond their plight. She said working as a filmmaker has helped her find healing.
“Some days, you will smile and some days might remind you of your abuser’s perfume or even the smell of a place might trigger your trauma. But you will live through all this, be happy and find yourself again,” Ms Diri said.
Alert signals to help survivors
These women have deployed some offline and online channels to create awareness, protect and create alert signals to rescue molested women and girls.
A donation of 50 pieces of lip balm with inscribed helplines of Project Alert on the surface, was once made to the NGO which they shared with abused women and girls during one of their programmes.
The lip balm inscription served as a decoy that abused women could use to contact the NGO without the abuser knowing.
“Because it is a feminine item, the abuser may not know that there is a phone number on it which you don’t have to store on your phone or write somewhere. It was effective because we had a lot of calls at that time,” she said.
After the initial distribution, the organisation could not continue because it lacked the resources to sustain it.
Dorothy Njemanze Foundation, where Ms Diri works, introduced an e-escape route on their website in 2020. At the top left corner of the website, a white on blue inscription reads ‘you can leave this site quickly. Click on the button to escape’.
When a user clicks on the button, it directs them away from the website to Google’s home page. This feature was introduced to prevent abused women and girls from being caught by their abusers while reporting a case to the foundation.
Persons who lack access to smartphones or the internet to use this feature are encouraged to report cases to churches, local organisations, and radio stations who will then refer the same to the Foundation.
Another GBV reporting and rescue mechanism is the Kasala mobile application designed by the Rector Group of Companies. The application is used for reporting emergencies and security breaches, which include incidents of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.
Stand to End Rape Initiative (STER), an NGO that provides a preventive mechanism and supports survivors with psychological and legal services, partnered with the creator of the app in August 2020 to provide support services to survivors and persons in danger.
To contact the NGO, the homepage of the app contains a ‘Speak with someone’ feature that enables users to seek help by reporting a case either through forms or direct calls to the organisation in the case of an emergency.
Ayodeji Osowobi, the Executive Director of STER and a survivor of sexual violence, explained that their operations are 24/7 and the response is in real-time, depending on the location of the rescue team of security officials available in Lagos and the eastern part of Nigeria, while they work on penetrating the northern region.
“When the person alerts us, we get their contact information and call them. We work with the police on such reports, and provide the survivors with mental health support, legal advice and representation”, Ms Osowobi told PREMIUM TIMES.
In addition to STER’s response, the app provides features of notifying registered emergency contacts, live streaming, GPS tracking, a timer and simulating fake phone calls as a guise to leave a threatening situation.
The downside to the app is that it does not function without the internet, excluding persons without smartphones who live in high-risk areas.
How paucity of funds, COVID-19 hamper the rescue operation
Ms Christina and Ms Diri’s experiences occurred before the emergence of COVID-19, but in their varying capacities at the organisations they work, they are overwhelmed with the effects of increased GBV cases during and after the pandemic.
For Ms Njemanze told PREMIUM TIMES that before the pandemic, the organisation received an average of six to 10 GBV cases weekly but during the lockdown period in 2020, they recorded 574 cases of abuse.
This increase was corroborated by the country’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Tracking in Persons and Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Team who said they got a 50 per cent rise in daily reported cases.
A survey done between April to September 2021, among 13 countries conducted by the United Nations Women, looked at the proportion of women who reported ever having experienced violence or knowing another woman who experienced it, since the pandemic. Nigeria ranked first with 1,482 female respondents.
UN Women survey on Gender-based violence in Nigeria cases against women between March and April 2020
Though the number of reported cases at Dorothy Njemanze Foundation has now reduced to the previous situation, their shelter still accommodates more persons than its intended capacity, causing a strain on their operations, particularly their finances.
Originally, the shelter is meant to take care of 13 people at the most for three months, as they help them navigate their next steps. But they currently have 19 people while some have stayed for over a year as they struggle to be reintegrated into the society.
Similarly, at Project Alert, Ms Christina, the shelter administrator, said the NGO can afford to feed survivors on an occasional basis when sponsored by donors.
Impact on rescued survivors
After the incident, Ms Diri placed a call to Ms Njemanze to rescue her.
Ms Njemanze booked a hotel room for her to recover for a few days before she relocated to work with the Foundation in Abuja.
A similar response is given to all women and girls who reported their cases to the NGO. First, the survivors are rescued and housed at the shelter, then depending on the nature of the case, they follow up with security agencies or the hospital.
Through the support of Action Aid, an international donor, some of the women have undergone some business training while some are taught skills based on their economic interests, to make them independent from their abusers and self-sufficient.
After leaving the shelters, some survivors refer cases to the foundation. “It feels like we have soldiers littered around,” Ms Diri said with a wide smile.
Some of the rescued women and girls also serve as volunteers in the foundation.
One of them is Sade Ajayi, (real name withheld to protect her identity) who was raped twice– in 2017 and during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020.
The second incident got her pregnant and she was referred to the foundation for care and protection from her parents’ vicious union.
Now 19 and with a two-year-old daughter, Ms Ajayi decided to volunteer when she noticed her story can help teenagers with similar experiences to speak out during advocacy.
“I understand how they feel and I am fulfilled doing what I do,” she said..
Likewise, survivors helped by Ms Osowobi also work as volunteers and donate to the organisation.
“They are now part of our system, which is the biggest testament to the quality and impact of our work. It is like a sisterhood that we are building and that makes me excited,” she said.
These female survivors shared their stories to encourage abused women and girls to speak out and leave their abusive experiences. They want them to know that they can be free and can venture into new paths beyond their situations.
This article was produced as part of the WA GBV Reporting Fellowship with support from the Africa Women’s Journalism Project (AWJP) in partnership with the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and through the support of the Ford Foundation.