If you were a married woman seeking visa clearance from the Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) two months ago, you would have been required to bring a letter of approval to travel from your husband, along with his passport photograph.
When feminists got wind of this gross institutionalised misogyny, they used their voices to push NDLEA to release a statement saying that this requirement has since been scrapped, even though the requirement was still very much reflected on their website at the time they received the backlash. Why this was even a thing in the first place is beyond me.
Recently, abortion rights in seemingly developed countries, like the United States of America, have been modified, with only a select few enforcing these rights. If we take it back home to Nigeria, abortion rights are not even a thing, leading to an estimated 33 per 1000 women of reproductive age undergoing unsafe abortions.
Even more frightening is the plight of our Afghanistan sisters under the Taliban dictatorship–a stark symbol of women’s rights regression. Under the now 3 years of Taliban governance, women can no longer pursue higher education, can’t go out without a male guardian and are prohibited from speaking in public, amongst other numerous heinous laws.
These events raise a pressing question: Are women’s rights regressing in real-time? For decades, women have united to fight for access to education, economic opportunities, safety, and bodily autonomy. Yet today, these hard-won gains seem increasingly under threat due to political, cultural, and economic pressures.
Suffrage Movement
The fight for women’s rights has brought significant achievements that have placed women in much better positions than they were before in the 19th/20th century, which is ironically not too long ago. In the latter century, in several nations, like the United States of America and the United Kingdom, women were disenfranchised and had to fight for their right to vote in elections.
While Nigerian women in the South and Eastern regions did not have to undergo any suffrage movement and participated in the election that brought about Nigeria’s first democratically elected government after colonisation, women in Northern Nigeria were not allowed to vote until after the civil war in 1979.
Political Representation
Even though Nigerian women are still grossly underrepresented at all levels of decision-making, the relentless activism of women like Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti was a much-needed push for women’s inclusion in political representation and other positions of power. For instance, in 2006, Dame Virginia Etiaba became Nigeria’s first female governor (Anambra State), and in 1985, Alele-Williams made history by becoming the first female vice-chancellor of a Nigerian university (University of Benin).
Though we have yet to see another female governor (talk more of Vice President or president), we have since had other women occupy the positions of vice-chancellor and legislative house.
Still, Nigeria’s political landscape remains male-dominated, ranking in the bottom ten globally in women’s representation in national parliaments. This underrepresentation stifles the inclusion of policies that address gender-specific challenges, such as maternal health and sexual violence.
Cultural Norms
The inheritance rights of women in Nigeria have historically been shaped by patriarchal customs, particularly in ethnic groups like the Igbo, where women were excluded from inheriting family property since they would go on to marry and “belong” to a new family. However, in 2014, Gladys Ukeje, after a 33-year court battle, secured a landmark judgement that gave her the right to partake in the sharing of her deceased father’s property—a win for all Igbo women nationwide.
Unfortunately, practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) remain prevalent despite campaigns for their eradication.
These victories have built a foundation for progress, and though it is clear that the struggle is far from over, sometimes, it feels like when we take a step forward, we take 7 steps backwards:
Legal Setbacks
In many countries, laws protecting women are being repealed or weakened. Research shows that an estimated 30 per cent of Nigerian Women and girls experience physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse in their lifetime, with about a staggering 55% of the survivors not accessing any form of support to end the violence.
This is why the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act (VAPP Act), enacted in 2015, remains a laudable and unprecedented legislation; it addresses violence against people, especially women and girls and provides multiple layers of protection against abusers.
The act championed by Charmaine Pereira Saudati Mahdi and Sauditi Sani criminalises several forms of violence, including domestic abuse, harmful widowhood practices, sexual violence, forced financial dependence, Female Genital Mutilation, emotional and psychological abuse, and creates support services for survivors, including a Sexual Offenders Register.
The provisions of this Act symbolise that there is justice for women like Osinachi Nwachukwu and Justina Otuene, amongst other women who have suffered violence in one form or another.
Yet, the VAPP Act 2015 initially did not offer universal coverage to all Nigerian women and girls as it was federal legislation. Therefore, while it was automatically applicable to F.C.T., other individual states had to domesticate it first. Seven years ago, only 17 out of 36 states in Nigeria had adopted the VAPP Act, but as of now, the remaining 16 states have adopted the VAPP. Gombe, Zamfara, and Kano remain the only states without a comprehensive law against violence.
Nevertheless, in several individual states, the Act is poorly implemented. Despite its already widespread weak implementation, Senator Jibril Isah, representing Kogi East District, thought it wise to lead the call for the repeal and reenactment of the VAPP Act. He proposes several questionable changes that take away from the spirit of the VAPP Act:
- While the VAPP Act did not make any separate provisions for sexual violence against children, the proposed bill describes the rape of minors as ‘defilement’, with a minimum sentencing that differs (and reduces) among several age groups: 0-11, maximum of 14 years; 12-15, a maximum of 12 years; 16-18; a maximum of 10 years. Great work Senator Jibril, now a rapist is emboldened to go for an older minor because he knows he would get a lesser punishment.
- The removal of independent funding for Non-Governmental Agencies: The Bill proposes a communal fund that receives every grant awarded for the support of survivors in Nigeria being completely controlled by (wait for it) the government through the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP). It isn’t news that NGOs do the most efficient work when it comes to supporting survivors. In addition, we see not only how much government bodies suppress NGOs and Civil Societies but also how government agencies are riddled with corrupt practices, bureaucracy and inefficient administration. If this Bill is passed into law, these NGOs will be weakened, and consequently, survivors will not be adequately supported.
- Removal of the use of gendered language in the Bill: With the proposed replacement of gendered pronouns (he/him, she/her) with neutral words like ‘person’ and ‘spouse’ in the description of crime and punishment, there seems to be a deliberate and sinister erasure of the fact that violence is significantly perpetrated towards women. This erasure is bound to diminish the voices of victims, who, in the first place, are not emboldened by society to speak up against their abusers.
Women suffer similar fates in regards to legislation that seeks to protect them, in the United States of America there’s an erosion of reproductive rights, as seen in the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the almost 50 years old judicial precedent established in Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the laws enacted by the Taliban that has been described as “100 pages of Misogyny”, is purported to have set Afghanistan women 20 years back.
The Continuous Rejection of Equality Bills
In 2023, a bill seeking equal rights for women, men, and persons living with disabilities passed the second reading in the Senate. The bill, titled, ‘Gender and Equal Opportunity Bill’, amongst other things, seeks to guarantee the rights of women to equal opportunities in employment; equal rights to inheritance for both male and female children; equal rights for women in marriage and divorce, and equal access to education, property/land ownership and inheritance. It also seeks to protect the rights of widows, guarantee appropriate measures against gender discrimination in political and public life, and ensure the prohibition of violence towards women.
However, it has been frustrated by many lawmakers—since 2016 when it was initially brought up— who contend that the bill goes against Islam and some socio-cultural norms.
It would interest you to know that this recent bill is not the first of its kind. Four previous bills, all set to correct long-standing inequalities between men and women in the country, never entered the second reading in the Senate.
Economic Setbacks
Although the economic empowerment of women has been greater than it has ever been before—through several economic empowerment programs and grants— the gender pay gap persists, with women in Nigeria earning less than men in equivalent positions. Many women are confined to the informal economy, where they lack job security or legal protections. Worse still, with the increased recognition of the importance of women’s financial independence and financial contribution to the household, there is no corresponding acceptance of the fact that their historical role as sole caretakers of that household must be reversed. Yay! More women now work 9-5s or own businesses, but sadly, they are still shamed by society when they do not oversee the bulk of house labour and child care.
From revenge porn to AI-generated porn
This is a compelling global issue that highlights the evolving challenges women face in the digital age.
Over the past decade, the rise of revenge porn—the non-consensual sharing of private sexual content—sparked widespread outrage and led to legal reforms in many countries, including Nigeria. Women fought hard to protect their bodies and images, pushing for laws to criminalise this abuse. In Nigeria, laws like the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015 was introduced to address this violation of privacy, recognising it as a form of sexual abuse.
Just as the world began to grapple with revenge porn, technology has enabled a more insidious form of abuse: AI-generated sexual content, often referred to as “deepfake porn”— unlike revenge porn, where the content is real, synthetic porn is entirely fabricated. It involves creating explicit images or videos of women without their consent and using artificial intelligence to superimpose their faces onto the bodies of pornographic actors.
Synthetic porn reveals the persistent objectification of women and the lengths to which abusers will go to maintain control.
Really, can women ever catch a break?
It is now obvious that the rights of women are not static; they ebb and flow depending on societal priorities. While the signs of regression are alarming, history teaches us that women’s resilience and collective action can reverse these trends. Women’s rights are human rights, and their preservation is a task for everyone. The crucial question is no longer whether these rights are regressing but what each of us will do to ensure they are not only protected but also advanced.
