High-profile incidents lead to rare public focus on issue, with
campaigners claiming rapists offend with 'impunity'
David Smith
Friday September 23 2011
guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/22/nigerian-women-march-against-rape
Women in Nigeria are planning to march in protest at what they say is
a hidden epidemic of rape and sexual violence in Africa's most
populous country.
The issue has received rare public attention after the emergence of an
online video in which a woman is apparently gang-raped and pleads with
her assailants to kill her.
This followed another recent incident in which it was alleged that a
young woman assigned to a community to perform volunteer service had
been raped by a traditional ruler.
Local campaigners hope that a show of anger on the streets - possibly
on 25 November, the International Day Against Violence Against Women -
will force Nigeria's leaders to end a conspiracy of silence.
Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, executive director of the Women Advocates
Research and Documentation Centre, said: "There is still a lot of hush-
hush around it in Nigeria. That's why the problem is as bad as it is.
But all that's happened in the past three months shows that rape and
sexual violence is a major issue."
Akiyode-Afolabi criticised the Nigerian government for a lacklustre
response.
"Nothing has been put into action. Our laws are still not clear. The
woman who wants to report rape does not have the confidence in the
justice system in Nigeria. The police are not accountable to the
people. There is a lot of impunity on the issue of rape and sexual
violence in Nigeria."
The country could learn from reporting mechanisms and laws pioneered
by Liberia, she added. "The Nigerian government has failed to protect
women. We need to hold it accountable. There is a need for immediate
steps to create laws and institutions that protect women."
Officially, rape is rare in Nigeria. In a country of 140 million
people, there were just 1,952 cases in 2009, according to federal
police statistics posted on a website called Nigeria Police Watch. But
a 2006 Amnesty International study [http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/
info/AFR44/020/2006/en" title="] said reporting was thought to be
"sporadic, piecemeal and inconsistent".
The wave of public revulsion has been triggered by an online video
that purports to show five men taking turns to rape a woman in a
university dormitory.
In the grainy footage, the five men promise to drive the woman home,
pushing her back down each time she starts to stand up. The woman
cries several times: "Please just kill me." The men laugh.
The 10-minute video had circulated for weeks around the campus of Abia
State University near the Niger delta before being posted on the
internet. It appears to take place in a single-room dormitory or
student hostel.
Nigeria's youth minister, Bolaji Abdullahi, called for the university
and police to arrest and prosecute the men shown in the video, as well
as offering assistance to the woman.
"The attitude of these men, if indeed they are young Nigerians, does
not represent the character and nature of the Nigerian youth," the
minister said.
On Thursday, Nigerian MPs roundly condemned the act and mandated the
police to investigate.
But the university and state government officials have reportedly
denied the video's authenticity and that it took place near or on the
university grounds.
Josephine Effah-Chukwuma, executive director of the Nigerian women's
rights group called Project Alert, told the Associated Press: "The
perpetrators go further to record it and circulate it. It shows for me
that they're daring society to take action on it. It shows that
there's a high level of impunity."
Amnesty's 2006 report, entitled Rape - the Silent Weapon, found that
rape of women and girls by the police and security forces, and within
their homes and community, was "endemic" in Nigeria. Last year the
Open Society Justice Initiative accused Nigerian police of committing
rapes [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10124812" title="], particularly of
sex workers, along with extrajudicial killings and torture in custody.
Joe Okei-Odumakin, president of the activist network Women Arise
[http://www.womenarise.org" title="], said on Thursday: "Impunity is
on the rise because of our inability to bring the perpetrators to
book. Rape and sexual violence have become a regular occurrence, a
norm in Nigeria. Women don't think they will be believed so they won't
openly give their side of the story."
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011
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