…As CEE-Hope, Hearts100 step up awareness, highlight health impact

For Folashade Onikoyi, the yearly commemoration of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a very important day when the global community addresses this unhealthy practice.

To this end, concerned groups and individuals raise awareness about the global practice whereby millions of women are forced into traditional harmful practice that involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons.

Having committed to join the team calling for an end to the practice, February 6 became a special day for that engagement to speak up about a practice that has sent millions of women to early grave.

Roundtable

Onikoyi spoke at the one-day round table in commemoration of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM organised by CEE-HOPE Nigeria in partnership with a German based organisation, Hearts100.

The event held in Ogba, Lagos on February 6, has the theme ‘Her Voice Her Future’. In 2012, the UN General Assembly designated February 6 as the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM, with the aim to amplify and direct the efforts on the elimination of this practice.

Listening to Onikoyi’s ordeal in the hands of the perpetrators who subjected her to FGM, the reason she took the mantle to fight the scourge became very clear.

Onikoyi, a housewife and mother of two girls, was only seven years when she was put under the razor and other crude unsanitary objects; her genitalia were brutally cut.

Painful experience

Onikoyi, who was resident in Ilorin, Kwara State, her native community, said on that fateful date two elderly women pinned her down while another woman brutally cut off her clitoris; part of her labia majora was similarly severed in the process.

She said: “Although, I wailed, shouting for help, the elderly women who carried out the FGM on me were not deterred. “One person held my two legs.

Another held my two hands while the third cut off part of my vagina and I bleed from the wounds until the bleeding stopped.

“I asked my father what the procedure meant to which he replied that it was necessary for every new bride and her spouse on their first sexual encounter after their traditional marriage.

It involved the bridegroom carrying a calabash with a white handkerchief and later announcing to relatives that the virginity of his wife was intact.” In spite of Onikoyi having gone through FGM, she lamented that her husband never carried out the ritual of carrying the calabash and white handkerchief.

The mother of two said although she was very fortunate to have delivered of her two baby girls safely, her sexual encounters with her spouse were usually very painful and associated with severe discomfort.

However based the pain she suffered from the FGM, Onikoyi said she never allowed any of her two daughters to be put through the same procedure. She cautioned parents to discourage the practice, saying it was time Nigeria put an end to the practice.

Prolonged labour

Another survivor, Ololade Ajayi of DOHS Cares Foundation, said the major impact of FGM on her was usually experienced during labour and child birth when the cutting on her vagina delayed the natural dilation of her birth passage resulting in prolonged labour.

Although, Ajayi said she had been very fortunate to have safe deliveries, some survivors had died in the course of undergoing

FGM endangers a woman’s reproductive ability

FGM.According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), FGM comprises all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

The practice has no health benefits for girls and women and causes severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of new-born deaths.

The practice of FGM is recognised internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. It is nearly always carried out by traditional practitioners on minors and is a violation of the rights of children.

More than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is practiced, according to UNICEF.

SouthEast

According to UNICEF, the prevalence of FGM in Nigeria is highest in the southeast, with 35 per cent of 0 to 14-year-old girls being affected, followed by the southwest, with 30 per cent of girls being affected by FGM.

Highlighting the areas where FGM practice is common in Nigeria, the Chief of UNICEF in Lagos Office, Celine Lafoucriere in a recent report, said: “If we zoom into specific states in the Southwest region, it is worth noting that Ekiti state still accounts for nearly 24 per cent of girls affected by FGM, and Oyo state still accounts for 21 per cent.

Very crucially, this means that thousands of girls and young women are being robbed of their childhood due to harmful practices such as FGM.” FGM, which is a violation of the human rights of girls and women, is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15.

Treatment of the health complications of FGM is estimated to cost health systems US$1.4 billion per year, a number expected to rise unless urgent action is taken towards its abandonment.

Zero tolerance

In her remarks at the Zero Tolerance for FGM event, Ann Ruffer, the Founder of HEARTS100, said: “About our partnership with CEEHOPE in addressing some of the urgent needs in Nigeria there is needs to address the issues around sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) by creating awareness about the issues, pressuring law makers to activate relevant laws to protect women and girls, scale up our efforts to provide protection for women threatened by SGBV via our shelter as well as provide economic empowerment for these and other vulnerable women across Nigeria via skills training, business grants and others so that they can be independent, rise above abuse and go on to maximise their potentials.

“Because we know far too little here about what’s going on in Nigeria, and even less about the hell many women and girls have to go through because of female circumcision in particular, as soon as people hear about you, how brave and courageous you are, how much energy you have to take your fate into your own hands, I get astonished.”

Ruffer, who reasoned that what happens to a woman in Nigeria, Afghanistan or anywhere else in the world can also happen to the, based on the interconnectedness of the universe called on individuals to end FGM.

“I urge you in your various capacities to continue to speak up and write and use every of your positions and platforms to work towards the protection, welfare and well-being of women and girls who are often the victims of negative cultures and traditions, such as FGM and other harmful cultures and norms.”

Other speakers at the event called for zero tolerance of FGM. On her part, the Executive Director of CEE-HOPE, Betty Abah described FGM as a human rights violation as well as a crime.

The Founder and Executive Director of Women’s Rights and Health Project (WRAHP), Bose Ironsi, stated that FGM endangers a woman’s reproductive ability.

A development expert, Kingsley Obom-Egbulem, said those involved in FGM are telling God, the maker of humans that he made a mistake putting clitoris in a woman, hence their decision to remove it.

Fathers

However, he called for the intervention of fathers and appealed to them to play their role in ending the practice. “If you are a father, why allow your daughter to suffer FGM,” he appealed.

Women rights activist, Margaret Onah Nnang, who is also the Executive Director, Safehaven Development Initiative, said FGM is still prevalent in Nigeria, especially in Osun State.

She said women in the village where ace musician, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido hails from, vowed to continue with the practice.

She then pleaded with those who may know Davido to urge him to intervene by being a voice against FGM. Other speakers at the event, including Olalade Ajayi, Yinka Kenny and Anthonia Ojenagbon, also criticised the practice.