NO to the War On Women!

Briefing Paper by the Nigerian Feminist Forum, 15 May 2019.

On the 22nd of April, 2019, agents of the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) carried out a raid on Caramelo Club in Utako, Abuja. Of the mixed clientele, men and women, only women were arrested. All the 27 women arrested were profiled as strippers, regardless of whether they were or not. Women were dragged out of the club in the nude and manhandled by male law enforcement agents. The 27 women were coerced into “confessing to prostitution”, without legal aid or counsel, and sentenced to one month’s imprisonment or a fine of N3000.

Barely a week later, further raids were carried out on several nightclubs in Abuja, on the 28th of April. Individual women were also abducted, including one who had simply gone out to buy noodles and another who was in front of a supermarket. In all, 70 women were abducted from different parts of Abuja and profiled as “prostitutes” because they were out after working hours. At a press conference, the arrested women gave testimonies of a range of violations: abduction, physical assault, mental anguish, and sexual assault. One woman who was menstruating at the time was ogled and humiliated by policemen. Women who wore wedding rings were released. The arrested women either paid between N5000 and N10,000 to be granted bail or, if they could not pay, were coerced into sex for bail.

Official raids on women in the streets at night in Abuja are not new. Activists have observed that the police and AEPB have been regularly involved in rounding up and removing women off the streets at night since the early 2000s. The previous round of overt state sponsored violence against women was in 2011, when police officers preyed upon women found on the city’s streets, dragging them onto buses, and sexually assaulting them because they were said to be “prostitutes.” Students, employees, shoppers, married women were among those abducted and told to pay N5000 to secure their freedom. Those who could not pay were tortured, brought before a mobile court, and then sent to a “rehabilitation camp” for sex workers(Isine, I. and Akurega, M. 2014.) In 2014, Dorothy Njemanze, an actor and activist, and three other women who had been assaulted by state agents, took the government to the ECOWAS Regional Court. In a landmark ruling on October 12, 2017, the Court found the Federal Government of Nigeria guilty of multiple violations of the women’s human rights. Despite this ruling however, official roundups of women in Abuja continue unabated.

Whilst extortion on the part of the police and the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) is not specific to their raids on nightclubs and abductions of women in public places at night, the manner in which the police and AEPB carry out their rounding up of women from nightclubs is very particular, being marked by sexually humiliating, coercive and violent actions. Women were stripped of their clothes and bundled naked into vans where they were sexually assaulted. This type of treatment is reserved exclusively for the women rounded up in such raids – no men were even charged by the police.

The latest state sponsored attacks on women in nightclubs signal an extension of roundups on the streets to intrusion into more enclosed/private spaces. In another instance, Ada Akunne, a Nollywood actress, was in her car on a night out with friends to celebrate a cousin’s graduation when they were stopped by police. The women were accused of being provocatively dressed and therefore “prostitutes”, particularly since there was no man in the car. The police called their colleagues to arrest the women and only released them after members of the public gathered around them. (Adebayo, B. 2019.)

State officials’ violence against women rests on the assumption that it is appropriate to divide women into two groups: “good women” – married, caregivers, sexually chaste and therefore worthy of respect – and “free women”, women whose bodies and sexualities are not under the control of men and therefore “not deserving of respect”. AEPB and police actions demonstrate their belief that women who are found on the streets of Abuja at any time after working hours fall into the category of “free women”. Moreover, they state that the environment must be “sanitised” of such women, particularly if they are thought to be dressed in ways considered too revealing. Women’s presence in the city at night, their dress, their mobility – all these are treated as “evidence” of women behaving badly and exerting a corrupting influence on the society at large.

The police have presented themselves as being concerned with “public morality”, which they (and many in the society at large) see as appropriately policed via control over the bodies of women. This is not only wholly inappropriate but also ultimately untenable. The responsibility for public morality cannot reside with women alone. Public morality would be more appropriately advanced by addressing official corruption, extortion and impunity. These are clearly not addressed by policing women’s presence in the city at night or in the evening nor by acting in ways that violate the safety of women in public.

 

By asserting that policing women’s bodies will advance public morality, state agencies justify their acts of extortion, sexual assault and rape by casting them as efforts to control crime and “promiscuity”. Police and AEPB officials have generally targeted women they consider to be “prostitutes” or else claim that the women they have targeted are “prostitutes”. The existence of commercial sex and a sex industry in Abuja is officially treated as an example of degenerate morality as well as being associated with criminality. What stands out, however, is the selective demonization by the police and the AEPB of women alone, not any of the men present in the nightclubs, the owners of the clubs or other parties involved.

Police and AEPB personnel feel justified in denying women sex workers, as well as women whom they claim are “prostitutes”, their bodily autonomy and integrity. Worse still, state agents treat the women as “fair game” – sexual objects whose bodies they are entitled to, whether through molestation, rape, the coercive exchange of ‘sex for bail’, which is also rape, or sexually degrading and intrusive language. Women who defend the rights of other women affected by state sponsored violence are also subject to such treatment. In the process, state agencies enact a toxic form of masculinity that perpetuates and legitimates rape culture.

The Nigerian Feminist Forum condemns these violations in the strongest of terms.
We demand an end to the rounding up, abductions and sexual violations of women and girls on the streets, in nightclubs, in markets, in public and private spaces in Abuja.
We demand an independent public enquiry into the latest spate of state sponsored violence against women, with substantive representation of women’s rights groups on the panel of enquiry.
We demand that the specific allegations of rape and sexual assault on the part of security and state officials should be investigated and prosecuted.
We demand the systemic transformation of all institutions involved in the state sponsored violence – particularly the police and the AEPB. This requires unravelling the obnoxious treatment of women in Abuja after working hours as “free women” whose bodies need to be controlled by official agencies. It also requires undoing the toxic masculinity which justifies male sexual entitlement to women’s bodies in institutional operations. Ultimately, it requires transforming the notion of “security” to mean, in principle and in practice, freedom for women from violence.
We insist that state agencies should actively respect the constitutional provision that the primary purpose of government is to provide for the security and welfare of all people (S.14 (2b)) without excluding women, whether these are students, hawkers, food sellers, civil servants, sex workers, married women, single women, shoppers or any other category of women.
We insist that state agencies should actively observe the constitutional provision that the sanctity of the human person should be respected and their dignity maintained (S.17 (2b)) without excluding all women’s rights to bodily autonomy and integrity.
We insist that state agencies should actively respect all women’s constitutional rights to freedom of movement (S.41(1)), peaceful association (S.40) and freedom of expression (S.38(1)).
We insist that state agencies should actively respect the constitutional rights of all women to freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sex (S.42(1a)).

 

Endnotes

1. Isine, I. and Akurega, M. 2014. ‘Investigation: How Abuja NGO, AEPB, Arrest Innocent Women, Label Them Prostitutes’. Premium Times, 10 February 2014.
2. Adebayo, B. 2019. ‘Nigerian police arrested 65 women in a raid. Some of the women say officers raped them.’ CNN, 13 May 2019.

 

The Politics of Pretty II: Womanhood as a Performance

Editorial: According to L’Oreal one of the foremost beauty brands worldwide, “African beauty and personal care market was estimated at €6.93 billion in 2012 and it currently increases between 8% and 10% per year… It is expected to reach €10 billion in 2017…Nigeria, the beauty and personal care market could reach €2.5 billion by 2017…”

As we all know, the ‘beauty and personal care’ industry thrives on colorism, fat shaming, hair and unrealistic beauty standards.

Temmie Ovwasa, visual artist, multi-instrumentalist, contributes this poem.

UnTitLed

When I was Thirteen,
I wasn’t like the other Girls in my Class,
The ones who seemed to have matured a lot faster than their Age,
Breasts were a symbol of maturity at that stage,
Big Buttocks emphasized by tight School Uniforms.

I was the early Bloomer who suddenly stopped blooming,
I could never seem to put on any Weight despite how hard I tried,
And trust me, I tried.
I was skinny, lanky and so very awkward.
I wanted to look like a Woman.

I’m twenty One,
Standing in front of the Mirror,
Staring at my wounded Reflection,
Wondering how and why I gained so much Weight so fast,
A size Ten,
Still considered “too Fat” ,
Protruding Belly,
Inconspicuous Buttocks and Breasts,
Round, puffy Cheeks.

Dissecting my Body,
Wondering if I should ditch Antidepressants,
I heard they make you Fat.
Loathing myself,
My skin,
For being exactly the way I wished to be Eight years ago,
It’s almost like the Standards are never the same,
They get more unattainable, the Older you grow.

They sell Insecurities disguised as Self-love and Healthy living,
The Teas, The Pills,
I’ve had One too many,
The quick fix for your depressing Flaws.
Nobody wants to run out of business,
Your Misery feeds their Children,
Your Misery fuels their Cars,
Your Misery credits their Accounts.

So do not Love yourself Darling,
You can always look better,
You can get that Nose you’ve always wanted,
Buy Your Hair,
Buy a new Face.
Buy a new Race.
But your Misery will never Fade.
They will keep Feeding you lies,
You will need to keep up this life,
As your Body begins to twist and turn,
New dents formed,
More needles, More needles,
But this Misery still doesn’t bend.

In one part of the world you are too Fat,
In another, too Skinny,
It’s almost like,
Your programmed to force your Body into the mold of the Capitalist,
So if he sells Black today,
Then Black is in,
And if Tomorrow,
Beauty means peeling your skin,
Then you will.

I’m Temmie Ovwasa,

21 year old post-human Artist.

A love letter to Nigerian Feminists – Ayodele Olofintuade

Dearest One,

How have you been? I mean how are you really?

I hope you’re making money, I hope you’re taking out time to be with friends, time to breathe and party. I hope you’re getting laid, getting well laid. But most importantly I hope you’re healthy and happy.

I understand how difficult it is to be a Nigerian, woman, to self-identify as feminist, to do this work of nation building by dismantling the patriarchy one damn brick at a time.

I understand how it feels to have reductive terms like ‘bitter aunty’, Facebook/Twitter feminist, etcetera thrown in your face each time you stand up for yourself and other women. I understand how tired you get when you open your account in the morning to the howling of trolls in your mentions, on your feed. I understand how you sometimes despair when ignorant people with the emotional intelligence of a rock and the IQ of the size of a grain of sand starts TELLING you how to be.

I am in your shoes.

But I want you to know that you’re doing alright, you’re rattling cages, things are no longer the same and it’s because you’re lending your voice and muscles to making this change. You are doing amazing darling. You are the dreams of your ancestors, you are beautiful, inside out.

Well Done!!!

Don’t forget to keep your eye on the ball. We will have equality, we will have bodily autonomy, we will have our sexual and reproductive rights. We will use our voices.We will have anything we set our sights on because we are human. We will have all our rights, we have power, we will use it.

I’m sending you peace and love. I’m sending you basket-fulls of not-giving-a-fuck.

Soar.

Feminism is not for perfect people

Dearest Friend and Feminist, ‎

Feminism is not for perfect people. Come with your flaws. Come with your quirks. Come with your peculiarities. Come with your religious beliefs and come with everything you have, and as you are. Don’t be roped into thinking that you need be perfect or fit into ‘one of a kind’ mould before you can identify with this movement/ideology. This is not that place.

Be spurred by injustice. Be spurred by inequality. Be spurred by a broken heart and be spurred by love. Whatever your reason for identifying with feminism, embrace it. It is valid.‎

This idea of who a ‘good feminist’ is or who a ‘bad one’ is, simply muddles the irrefutable diversity of human differences and experiences and you know what else, it attempts at equating your feminism with some behavioural codes. I’m not a good feminist and I am not a bad feminist. I’m simply a feminist, one influenced by my environment, personal character and inherent quirks. I will be good somedays and I will be very bad some other days. We cannot all be the same and there is no one shade of this ideology.‎

And something else, when you’re called a Facebook(Twitter) Feminist, accept that tag proudly. There is something called Digital Activism and social media is as valid as any other mode of activism. The digital world is as real as the offline world. The work you do online is valuable as the offline work. This is our reality. Digital conversations are making much impact as non-digital conversations. Anyone who undermines the influence of this space is living in the rocks. Social media is real and it’s influence is real. And whether your advocacy is just online, that is valid.‎

You need nothing else except the drive for fairness and equality of all persons. You will make mistakes because you’re human and don’t think it will subtract from your right to identify with feminism.

Your existence is larger than one ideology you identify with. There is more to you. You contain multitudes.‎

You’re allowed to be flawed, contradictory, messy and confused. Don’t ever submit yourself to some purity test of what qualifies or disqualifies your feminism. There is no appointed feminist police to scrutinise your authenticity. Own that label and stumble around, make your mistakes and learn from them. And don’t be too concerned with the superficiality of your preferences; whether you love or hate men, or whether you like or detest make up, or whether you dress as a tomboy or a Madonna, or whether you enjoy erotic or Shakespearean books. 

Never attempt to organise your entire life into ‘feminist acts’ or ootherwise. Your life is fluid. And don’t be too concerned about the people who have an entire script of what you should be doing or how you should live as a Feminist when they are doing none of that. If they were genuine, they will lead the way and show you ‘the right way’ but their true intentions is that they are here to discredit you. Keep doing your thing. And if you’re bad, well half a loaf is better than no loaf.‎

In conclusion, acknowledge that you’re making a change, nothing else matters. Go eat some ice-cream or baileys and if you’re a Nigerian, indulge yourself this very long weekend/holiday starting now! Go and prosper or see a movie.

All the love in my heart.‎

Things Fall Apart and the African Feminist’s Manifesto

In the past few days I have found myself wading through torrents of feminism – the murky, the combative, the conciliatory, the prescriptive, the anxious, the embarrassed, the conservative, the misinformed, THE BADLY MISINFORMED, the ABJECT IGNORANT, the level-headed and the very level-headed.

I confess I was more enervated from resisting the temptation to respond to the arguments flying all over my head like drones than from actually responding. Some time ago, I made a personal vow to never argue either the basics of gender or sexuality with Nigerians. Those who already know do not need the rudiments. Those who do not know are sincerely ignorant and cannot be persuaded. It is a waste of time to convince anybody.

Like Barrister Tade Ipadeola said on a thread, feminism is one of the theories that have been badly taught in Nigerian institutions and one that has equally been badly received. I concur to that.

Last month in Ibadan, someone gave me a book –a festschrift actually- written in celebration of a Nigerian feminist professor. It was a 600 plus paged book. I started reading the Introduction written by some women. They were talking about male gaze and in the same paragraph blamed sexual violence on the way women dress. I closed the book and left it somewhere. Whatever else the book has to say has been destroyed by the poorly thought out and judgmental introduction chapter.

In the past few days however, I have come across so much talk about feminism that I am ready to make an exception just once to talk about feminism; just this once to inform those who have badly received feminism. We need them to understand that feminism is not about mundane exchanges about whether a man or his wife is supposed to cook; that feminism does not begin and end with Facebook posts; that feminism does not threaten the perfect “African culture” or “African marriage” they endlessly rhapsodize about. Instead, what it does is open their eyes to the imbalances they are wilfully blind to.

No knowledge, no philosophy, no thinking, is worth its name if it does not make one uncomfortable or threaten what is believed to be ‘normal’.

One of the arguments I hear over and over again is that there is no patriarchy in African societies; that our mothers were in no way oppressed; that black women are merely copying white women who, in private, are subservient to their own men. This argument has no clear gender divide. Women, especially those cocooned in the privileges their education affords them, rant endlessly about why we should speak of equality and not feminism. These women, ever afraid to be seen as having achieved anything based on gender kick against the appreciation of gender differences and the peculiarities of challenges that arise they spur. This makes me wonder how many generations it will take to undo the insidious effects of male domination in our society.

If you want to speak about equality in African society, draw near and I shall tell you the stories of my grandmother, mother and myself. We –three of us- represent different generations of women; we faced different challenges and I can share a narrative of how the changes in the material culture define what each of us thinks of “patriarchy.”

As an older female child in a Yoruba household, I can tell you that my age gives me certain privileges over my younger brothers. Yoruba institutions are primarily age –not gender- based. Yet, when I step out of my house in Ibadan and walk in the larger Nigerian culture, I am subject to a different dynamic.

One way or the other, we embody the contradictions of the gender relationship in our various ethnic traditions and the larger ones precipitated by forces of colonialism, globalization and other factors that order our contemporary world. These things are more complicated than the simple binary of man/woman; black/white; African/non-African to which some folks reduce every conversation. “Patriarchy” in Africa has never so been simple and shallow. If only people would take time to learn about feminism and its routes through African scholarship, we would have far more meaningful and sensible dialogues.

I understand the frustration of feminists when those who do not know jack, proudly confess they have not read shit, hand out verdicts on feminism.

To illustrate the complications of gender relationships, I turn to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. In the book are three women who symbolize different (and contradictory) conditions (and positions) of women in our society at every point.

There is Ani, the earth; Chielo, the priestess; Ojiugo and Ekwefi, Okonkwo’s wives. If you want to argue that the Igbo society Achebe presents is patriarchal without any redeeming value, then you are confronted with the question of why the men would revere a female god. Why should a society like that give any woman regard enough to worship her? If you want to argue that Ani is just a metaphor, an idea, an immaterial being whose principles can structure the culture only because she is disembodied, what do you do with Chielo, a woman so powerful men feared her? If you want to take both Ani and Chielo as the quintessence of African women – powerful and unaffected by the lopsidedness of patriarchy, what do you do with Ojiugo and Ekwefi? In the book, both of the women suffered measures of physical abuse but their conditions were never resolved. Okonkwo was reprimanded for beating a woman in the Week of Peace but not for the act of violence in itself.

Think about it, there is no time that these women are not archetypes of sort and represented in our society.

While you are busy praising the Nigerian society that has “made” women like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and busy comparing her to every other woman as example of female power in contemporary society, remember, for every Ani, there are women like Ojiugo and Ekwefi whose abuses are not even a subject of conversation. Why did Achebe even create the character of Ezinma (Ekwefi’s daughter)? Why did her father look at her and wished she were male? What underlying critique do you think he was passing across about gender and social prospects?

So for the Nigerian anti-feminist who says feminism is unnecessary because women have never had it so good because they see the Ani and the Chielos of this world, I say leave us who profess feminism to speak for the Ekwefi/Ojiugos. If your life suits you as it is, like Barack Obama’s insurance, we say “keep it!” Nobody is asking you not to cook for your husband or to marry a woman who gets an orgasm from watching the pots boil in her kitchen-office. That is your life but your life is not everybody’s life. If you know how much the world that you thrive in has benefited from feminist ideology, you would think twice before running it down to embrace that illusion of your perfect African life.

My Abortion Story – Eniitan

From the Editor: In an article titled The Case for Legal Abortion in Nigeria, Temi Giwa presented facts, figures, and strong reasons for legalizing abortion in Nigeria. One of the reasons she presented is that in spite of the fact that abortions are illegal in Nigeria, over 500,000 abortions are carried out annually. This figure was presented by Dr Obasanjo-Bello, the chairman of the Nigerian Senate Committee on health, but The Guttmacher Institute claims that the figure is higher, conservatively putting it at 610,000 abortions per year.

In this same article, Temi Giwa said that 142,000 women are treated for complications arising from abortions every year.

In 2013, women advocates all over Nigeria, jubilated when the Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, signed into law a bill titled “Imo State Law of Nigeria Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) law No. 12”. on the surface this law prohibited all forms of violence, but embedded within it was a proviso authorizing abortion on demand.

Photography – Hertfordshire

There was an outcry from ‘Christians’ within the state, who have always promoted ‘abstinence’ and ‘morals’ as a way of curbing pregnancies outside of wedlock and within a few days the governor asked the State’s House of Assembly to repeal the law.

Our contributor, who wishes to remain anonymous, talks about her experience, her abortion.

Read on :-

I was pregnant, I was in my early twenties. I was broke.

The father? He’s not important in this story because this is the story of a foetus and I.

A young Nigerian girl of my age was supposed to be a virgin, the soul of purity. While you were growing up your first introduction to your yearnings for someone’s touch, for sex, was shame, you were NOT supposed to have those feelings, wanting to have sex was a thing of shame. So you rightly learn to associate sex with shame.

You were raised to be asexual, to be a sex object, desired by men. Men decide whether you are desirable or not, they decide your worth as a woman. The prettier you are, the higher the pedestal you are placed on. The prettier you are, the more unavailable you are, the more men want you.

As an object you have no right to feelings, you are supposed to meet one man, preferably the type described in Mills and Boons stories – the tall, dark, handsome and of course, rich man. You are supposed to FALL in LOVE with this man, the man is supposed to rescue you from a potential life of loneliness, of permanent singlehood and marry you.

You are NOT supposed to have sex. Even in the dark of the night when loneliness grips you and you instinctively reach out to feel a body next to you.

Your vagina is to be kept clean AT ALL TIMES, even if it means cleaning it with lime. You are not supposed to get wet at the mere sight of the object of your desire. The only time you are expected to have any kind of feeling is when a MAN, preferably your husband, is there beside you, when He wants to put his penis inside of you. Getting that dampness between your thighs is a SIN a mortal sin which is equal to DEATH.

So I broke all these taboos and slept with a man, who was not my HUSBAND. Not only did I become a slut, I also became pregnant!

Pregnancy is another thing entirely. Not only is it illegal in Nigeria, it is also considered a form of punishment by the society.

You’ve been a bad girl, you deserve to be pregnant, you deserve to have babies you cannot care for. You deserve to have your life ruined.

Women are bred to be carriers of babies. They are supposed to be receptacles of a man’s sperm. In biology classes, when you are being taught, along with about thirty other girls, about your body. You are taught about your REPRODUCTIVE organs. They are not called pleasure organs, these organs are supposed to be strictly for reproduction! Your breasts, nipples, vulva, your fallopian tubes… Nobody tells you about your nipples, the way they rise to attention when touched or kissed. Nobody ever mentions that the clitoris is the ultimate orgasm giver.

Even when the sexual act is being described, the biology teacher talks about how a man’s penis will rise, how he will ejaculate his spermatozoa into your tract so that those little devils can swim up to your eggs. The lecture is delivered in a voice that implies that this act is shameful, something to be done with a man in the dark recesses of the night, preferably under bedclothes, with your eyes averted in shame.

The man, ejaculates, the woman is laid out flat and bears it. You’re not supposed to enjoy sex, you’re not supposed to have orgasms.

And you daren’t ask your parents about sex! You’ll probably earn yourself a couple of slaps and lectures on how you should stay a virgin until marriage, because virgins are more valuable than non-virgins in the marriage market. You’re a thing, an object. You’ve been objectified from the moment the doctor looked between your thighs, spotted your vagina and announced to the world ‘it’s a girl!’

So there I was with this foetus inside me and the knowledge that I don’t want this foetus turning into a child, I cannot afford to have the foetus grow into a child because I can barely afford to feed myself. Do I actually want children?

I can hear some women saying stuff like, so why did you open your legs when you knew you weren’t ready? Like the Yoruba will say, “why did you r’edi (why did you do the grind) when you’re not ready.” The next question is ‘why didn’t you use a condom?’ but … nobody told you about condoms in those days, condoms are dirty. Good girls don’t carry condoms around, good girls don’t enter a pharmacy or a supermarket and looks into the eyes of the sales person and say ‘I want to buy a condom’ in those days. So you panic! Who would you tell? You daren’t tell your mother because you know she’d first strip you off with her tongue or any handy broom or stick – she might insist you have the baby, to ‘punish’ you.

So you start putting out feelers.

There’s always somebody who knows ‘somebody’ who’s had an abortion before. These people are without names or faces, because abortions are shameful things, abortions are like STDs … nobody ever admits to having one.

Then one of your friends comes to you with a slip of paper. On it is an address and the amount of money you need for the abortion. Not a single word is exchanged, not even a ‘thank you’ because you’re doing this to help out a friend in need, you are a good girl, good girls don’t get pregnant ‘outside of wedlock’.

The ‘doctor’ is a young man. He lives in a dingy building, there’s no light in this building. The doctor takes you into a semi-darkened room. He first asks for his money, after you give it to him and he counts it, he asks you the last time you’d ‘seen’ your period.

You tell him.

He asks if you’re absolutely sure because he needs to know the ‘exact’ date, so he can determine the ‘exact’ month of the baby.

He talks in a dead voice, a voice devoid of emotions. You’re a stupid girl who got pregnant.

You think about the last time you’d seen your period. You think about the fact that the ‘doctor’ was giving you some peculiar looks. You look straight back at him and say ‘yes I’m sure’ all the while wondering if you can trust him not to kill you.

You arrive at the conclusion that it will be a win-win situation, he kills you, you’re dead, who cares? You won’t be here to be shamed (yes, I was depressed, suicidal even).

Then you remember horror stories of girls who got infected and had their wombs removed, girls who can never have children again – another win-win … (I didn’t examine that feeling too closely).

He asks you again about your last period.

Yes, you’re sure that was your last period.

Then you remember HIV. You make a mental note to go for the test… but first things first…

The young man takes you to an even darker, dank room, the odour of something you can’t place your finger on, teasing your nose. He asks you to take off your jeans and panties, no don’t take off your t-shirt.

He asks you to lay on a long wooden table after laying a filthy, green wrapper on it. He asks you to lie on it, and spread your legs.

As you look into his immobile face and spread your legs, the self-hate nearly chokes you. Maybe it’s even better you die.

He spent some time mining for gold as he waited patiently for you to spread them wide enough. He palpates your stomach.

He’s not even fucking wearing gloves! You die inside, tears of humiliation, of shame roll down your face.

The tears stop as you feel something cold slide inside your vagina.

Please don’t make noise o! You don’t want the neighbours hearing you, he says as you feel something tearing your insides apart.

You open your mouth but nothing comes out. The pain is beyond anything you’ve ever felt before. It tears you apart. The pain goes on and on.

Don’t close your legs. His voice pierces your pain. Your head is bursting, you are sure you would die, you know this pain will kill you.

The pain goes on and on and on…

The pain is worse than closing a door on your index finger, worse than slicing your thumb with a sharp knife, worse than somebody punching you in the face…

At some point you must have fainted because the next time you open your eyes, he was standing in front of a basin you hadn’t noticed when you first entered the room, he was washing his hands. He was washing blood off his hands, your blood.

You’re bleeding.

He asks if you brought a pad. You shake your head numbly, it threatened to blow apart, so you stop shaking it.

He pulls an old toilet roll out of a drawer. He asks you to get dressed, he gives you the toilet roll, take as much as you want, he added generously.

You touch yourself, the blood is still gushing.

The bleeding will stop, please get up, you have to leave now. He unceremoniously pulls you off the table.

The pain clutched at your stomach as you tried to straighten up. But you refuse to make a sound, you absorb the pain, the pain is your punishment.

You unfold the toilet paper and roll it up, inserted the makeshift pad between your thighs. You pull on your underpants your trousers.

He gives you some pills and asks you to take them … when you get home.

You can’t remember how you left that dark space, you walk in a haze of pain. You board a taxi to your house. You half crawled into your room, on to your bed.

You find some water, swallow the pills, was about to roll back into bed when you realise your clothes are soaked with blood. Your blue jeans were now dark red, the edge of your yellow t-shirt spotting a thin line of red.

You pull off your clothes, half-crawled to your bathroom, pour water on yourself while leaning against the bathroom wall. You are crying, but nobody hears you. Nobody cares. You brought this on yourself, this pain.

Marang Motlaleng: From Botswana with … assault

From the Editor: If we had followed the age old fashion of giving sensational titles to stories the title of this piece would have been ‘Botswana Diplomat assaults female journalist’, because that was exactly what happened on the 28^th of September to Michaela Moye, a writer and journalist who works with a radio station in Abuja.

Michaela Moye at the birthday party .

From the Sudan to Timbuktu, Zimbabwe to Zanzibar, our reality as women is the patriarchy, which has eaten so deep into our society that we have all been crippled. Women are the ‘softer sex’, the ones expected to smile at catcalls, assaults, violence. We are the ones expected to forgive and forget because men are the ‘hard sex’, the ones that do not cry, men are children, mere babies who ‘cannot’ control their impulses.

When a woman is assaulted or insulted, you were asked ‘what did you do to warrant this?’ When you were raped you were asked ‘why did you go to his house in the first place? Why were you dressed like that?’ Nobody asks these men ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ In most cases, these psychopaths literally get away with murder.

From childhood, you are socialized to be ashamed of your body. Your body is inherently sinful, so you need to cover it up in order not to ‘tempt’ boys, but there are times that your covering up might be ineffective, in this case a man may be ‘pushed’ by your ‘ethereal beauty’ to invade your personal space and touch you (inappropriately), in this case you’re supposed to smile indulgently, pat them on the head and coo ‘boys will be boys’ (giggling also helps).

A recent article examined the Nigerian Constitution and concluded that the Nigerian Justice is no Lady’ It is apparent from the tone of the constitution (which uses he for ‘everybody’) that the Nigerian woman is considered (or not considered at all) as a second-class citizen. This is predominantly the stance of the constitution on women all over Africa.

So when Mr Motlaleng, decided to touch Ms Moye’s body without her permission he was affronted that she would protest, the question he and other men present during the assault asked was ‘what is wrong with you?’

Read Michaela’s account of the incidence.

Marang Motlaleng

On Saturday 28 September this year, I went for a birthday party. In the wee hours of Sunday, while the party was still grooving, I decided to take a break and workaholic that I can be, I was checking my emails. Suddenly, this chap, called Marang Motlaleng materialized in front of me. He’s someone I have mutual friends with so I thought he wanted to talk to me. I lowered my phone and in that moment, he reached forward, grabbed and squeezed my breasts and started running away. I gave chase and caught him. We both fell and I tried to get in some punches and kicks but I was lifted off him. I must tell you that I have NEVER been more disappointed in Nigerian men as on that day. They were actually telling ME to calm down, that such behavior is expected. I was so mad. I couldn’t believe what they were saying to me.

One guy, who I had never seen before, kept on saying, “I saw what happened, just let it go. Man!” Even thinking about it now annoys me no end.

Anyway, there was a lot of ruckus. In the midst of it, Marang even threatened to beat me up – he and a bunch of guys he was hiding behind. I dared him to bring it on but he didn’t. 

I made up my mind to write to his consulate – Botswana High Commission – and inform them of their staff’s assault on my person. Fortunately, a lawyer offered his services pro bono. We wrote the letter to the consulate, copying Marang. The only thing I asked for was a formal apology from Marang and a statement printed in a national daily about Botswana’s commitment to gender quality.

Neither the apology nor the statement have been forthcoming. In fact, Marang hired a lawyer, who wrote to my own lawyer citing Diplomatic Immunity.

My lawyer says that we cannot sue. I was hoping that there would be some provision that states that diplomats/consular staff, that commits an offense outside the course of official duties, will be liable. I am considering embarking on a campaign for some policy amendment.

My plan is to continue engaging the Botswana Consulate and of course, harnessing the power of the internet until some proper action is taken against Marang. I am told that he has acted inappropriately to several people and I am hoping that they will stand with me.

What is my feminism shaped of?

Tokunbo

I have long wondered if I would be this ‘strong and very opinionated’ woman had I stayed and schooled in Nigeria. You see for me feminism was a Western concept started by the Suffragettes who I studied about as part of my history lessons of a  British education system so you’ll have to forgive my misguided beliefs as I only found out about the likes of Queen Sheba, Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and many others just over a decade ago.

So when I was asked to contribute to 9jafeminista it got me thinking about the things that have shaped me into this modern day British-Nigerian unapologetic feminist that I am.

Firstly I’ll need to pay homage to my mother – despite becoming a widow at a young age of 33 with 4 young children all under five and me her youngest at just six months,  growing up I always heard my mum say she never remarried because she didn’t want her children to suffer in the home of a new husband. The significance of this never really resonated with me until my late teens/early twenties when I started to gain a better understanding of the intricacies of marriage in the African context. And for this and many more reasons I am eternally grateful for her as showed me first-hand what it means to have feminist values and how to be strong and resilient.

Tokunbo with her mum

My feminism was shaped by the books I read by authors such as Maya Angelou, Buchi Emecheta, Chimamanda  Adichie, Zora Neale Hurston, and countless others. Books in which strong Black women were a common feature even with their flawed but unapologetic ways.

It is shaped by the song ‘Superwoman’ in which Karyn White lambasts her husband when he starts to take her for granted by crooning
‘ I’m not your superwoman
I’m not the kind of girl
That you can let down
And think that everything is okay
Boy I am only human
This girl needs more than occasional hugs
As a token of love from you to me…’

My feminism is shaped by the friendships I have cultivated with other strong, confident and amazing women I have met across three continents.
It is shaped by the men who allowed me to be both strong and feminine in equal measures.

Lately my feminism has been redefined and further shaped by the many modern day  African women feminists I have encountered both in the Diaspora but also on the home continent. Women like the Ogwuegbu sisters who are fearless not just because of their numbers but mainly because of their unapologetic feminist stance. Women like Wana Udobang, Saratu Abiola, Olabukunola Williams, Chika Unigwe, Funmi Iyanda, Abena Gyekye and so many others have shown me that feminism is not a Western construct thus reassuring me I would still be the same unapologetic feminist I am today had I been born and raised in  Ojuelegba and not Camden Town.

My feminism is who I am not what I seek to be.

In conversation with Ikhide: Lindagate, love and feminism

From the Editor: Plagiarism is a profession as old as time, at least that’s the impression one gets particularly in Nigerian cyberspace as bloggers ‘borrow’ (often and consistently) articles and photographs from other blogs or websites without attribution or payment.

Linda Ikeji and her Jeeeeep (culled from lindaikeji.blogspot,com)

Ms Linda Ikeji, a former model turned blogger made millions from her gossip and entertainment site which was getting over 500,000 hits per day. Ms Ikeji had been accused by several writers and photographers, of simply ‘copying and pasting’ stories and pictures from different blogs and websites without permission or even an acknowledgement.

Things, however, came to a head earlier this week, (after Ms Ikeji posted the picture of her latest expensive car on social media and had done some more copying and pasting on her blog) when, beleaguered writers and bloggers asked why she couldn’t pay for stories if she was making enough to buy an expensive jeep, they took it a step further by reporting her to Google (there are even rumours of a class action suit) and her blog was taken down.

9jafeminista however got interested in the story when a literary critic, human rights activist and cyberspace troublemaker, Ikhide Ikheloa joined in the fray, instead of calling for her head, as would be expected, Mr Ikheloa joined his voice to the multitudes DEFENDING Ms Ikeji’s actions.

Below is the interview conducted with Ikhide Ikheloa (you have to pardon his too much grammar):

9jafeminista: Why have you been defending Linda so loudly on social media? As a writer you know very well that plagiarism it’s a really big deal and as you’ve pointed out, you’ve also been a victim of intellectual property theft, so why then are you coming to the defense of a woman who built her wealth from other people’s hard work?

Ikhide: To be clear, I do not condone plagiarism, acts of intellectual brigandage and the notion that writers, especially Nigerian writers, should write for free. Indeed my position on this matter is best articulated by  Ayo Sogunro  and Mr Mobility.

I salute them for articulating their views on the Linda Ikeji saga with deep introspection and rare integrity.

What I am up in arms against is the rank hypocrisy and lack of self introspection by some of the major howlers. I detect class

” I detect class condescension and sexism in this issue” – Ikhide R Ikheloa

condescension and sexism in this issue. Where were they when the men of Premium Times garroted the credibility of Nigerian journalism for pennies? Some of them are in cahoots with Dele Olojede in the NEXT saga. They hurt many young people. Where were they when Chris Abani took Africa’s dignity to the cleaners for pay? Nigerian intellectuals protect their own.

The abuse many of us have suffered in the hands of pretend-publishers in Nigeria is well documented. I am owed thousands by NEXT. I am lucky; some people were not so lucky, no one has held them accountable because there are no accountability structures in Nigeria that work. If you need relief, count on external intervention. That is what happened in this case. Google took care of business. The characters in NEXT, Premium Times, etc. are still walking around giving us phony lectures about corruption in Africa. Some of them want to hang Linda. The hypocrisy is galling.

I adore Linda Ikeji. She is gutsy, brilliant and market savvy. She has survived the unnecessary roughness that stands for life in Nigeria and has made a name for herself. She also is a leader with more following than those of all the African bloggers combined. We should study her business model and use it to propagate our ideas instead of begging pretend publishers to publish books for us that only our relatives will pretend to read.

9jafeminista: There’s no denying that Nigeria is patriarchal, and there’s double standards whenever a woman is involved in anything considered scandalous. For example Ynaija, the Sun Newspapers etc are known for the kind of copying and pasting journalism used by Linda, they have been called out on several occasions by the linguist Kola Tubosun,

But like the case of Patricia Etteh, the first female speaker in the House of Representatives (who was later cleared of corruption charges leveled against her) while men literally get away with murder, a woman would be singled out for execution, if possible, if she plays the men at their own game and appears to be winning.

Ikhide: Exactly. Linda has done some sketchy things, but she is head and shoulders above the men that ruin Nigeria daily. She survived their dysfunction, a scrappy single woman, who found a way to tap into a hunger and make a real living from it. Why start with her?

I am disappointed that many did not see through the numerous self-serving agendas at play here.

9jafeminista: That being said should writers because of this ‘forgive’ her for stealing their intellectual property? Already there are rumors of a class action suit being brought against her and Ms Ikeji has not helped matters by going the way of corrupt Nigerians blaming ‘enemies’ and raining curses on them, instead of offering to make reparations, or at least offer an apology and start paying writers.

Have you been in touch with her? What solution are you proffering?

Ikhide R Ikheloa

Ikhide: Linda and I are not personal friends. We have never communicated privately, ever! I am in this on principle and because this one evening, to the chagrin of her haters, ML had sent me to the doghouse and I had a lot of time on my hands, lol! I rarely read her blog, but I know that she has half a million followers at the very least and unlike most Nigerian writers, she has parlayed that into money. I would love to have her problem.

What solutions do I have? Great question! I have been in the forefront, as you know, of vociferously demanding accountability from African intellectuals, they are THE problem. Those who want to lynch Linda Ikeji must learn to be consistent and honest. Do not look the other way when your friends, men by the way, do 100 times what Linda has done and then start writing preachy tweets when Linda does her own. More importantly, many of us actually make a living from the lack of accountability in Nigeria. We should join those who have been speaking up to force leaders to build these structures. Nigeria and Nigerians only listen when the Washington Post and Google bark. In the absence of accountability, you will not get any apology or reparations from Linda Ikeji, Dele Olojede, Premium Times.

There has to be a motivation for folks to behave. You see what happened with Basketmouth when we went after him? He apologized. Quickly. Who wan die?

9jafeminista: Because we are totally irreverent we need to ask one last question, two sef… Do you consider yourself a feminist? Do Nigerians fall in love?

Ikhide: I think the term feminist is fast becoming a pejorative, so I am reluctant to dump yet another label on myself. I consider myself a human rights activist and will fight to the death for the right of another human being to be human in all respects.

And do Nigerians fall in love? DSD What a question! Please release all the love poems I have ever written to you and make Neruda blush in his grave. Of course we fall in love. Right now I am on the rebound. Again. Free me, Olokun of my seas.

 

 

 

 

 

Forgiveness or Gini?

Editor’s note : Ugo Chime is a public health practitioner and policy maker. Aside from this she also enjoys writing in her spare time. In spite of being a self-confessed feminist (or maybe because of it) she is married (surprised eh?) to a Nigerian man (aren’t all feminists supposed to be bitter single women, or divorcees, …or widows?)

Anyway here’s her creative non-fiction piece on learning about forgiveness.

She talks about the way women are raised to believe that they are the ‘softer’ sex and had to learn to ‘forgive’ over and again,     especially when you’re married because men are ‘hard and heartless’ and there’s nothing you or anybody can do about it because they are … ‘men’.

Read Ugo’s piece, she might be able to teach you a thing or two about forgiveness.

Forgiveness or Gini?

One of the ways women are prepared for married life is the coaching on forgiveness.

You know, you would have a load of shit thrown at you by ‘dear husband’ and his ‘adorable family’. But a good woman keeps her home. You know … at all cost.

So, you need to forgive, forgive, forgive, and you could never start early enough in learning this needful skill. Whether you are fighting with your siblings, your classmates, your parents, hell… even strangers, your skill at letting go of anger, forgiving and forgetting… even if the offenders isn’t in the least remorseful… is expected [because you’re a ‘soft woman’].

Be sure someone will offer up a “ah ah, are you not a woman again? How can you be so hard-hearted?” if you go against ‘nature’ and let that your ‘soft, ever-forgiving heart’ linger on the hurt just one second longer than it was built for.

I suppose many a-woman has profited from this training. They have gone ahead to have wonderful marriages, with husbands who proclaim – ever so effusively- how their wives are the very embodiment of the woman in Proverbs 31.

I’m just not that woman, unfortunately. I don’t see the Association of Well Behaved Married Women ever having me.

I have, however, learnt forgiveness … from my husband. The man knows a thing or two about letting things go.

[My marriage] is not a perfect union. Last year, in fact, I considered leaving. Marriage felt restrictive, a tight noose around my neck and I desperately wanted to be rid of it. Then came to a decision that I couldn’t envisage a life without my man in it, hence I sat put. As with everything, I opened up to him about wanting out. He did not hold it against me – just like other countless failings of mine. I’m not going to list them – well they are not pretty at all. But he remains committed to me. He takes everything in his stride.

I believe there is nothing I could do that he would not forgive. I mean, even if I cheated… I know for a certainty that he would forgive it. It is going to hurt him, but he isn’t going to throw me out of the house (you know how they do it in Nollywood, right), or file for divorce or hold it over my head for the rest of our years together.

This is completely different from what I had been made to expect in marriage.

I am getting better at forgiving, at letting go. Well, because I have to share my pet peeves with hubby, and I know he’s going to say I should not bear things in mind so much. And I am going to get annoyed with him for telling me how to conduct my affairs. I’m probably not to going to him for a while. Then I remember how easily I can get forgiven, so perhaps I should not be so hard on others. And with some luck, my son is going to grow up to be like this father, then some woman would have a little bit an easier time in marriage as a result.