How rape, sexual assault are pushing Nigerian girls out of school

Hassana Ibrahim* was just 17 when she was allegedly raped by her class teacher in 2019. The teacher, simply identified as Umaru, lured her into his room while returning home from Islamiyya where she attended an Arabic night class in Sokoto. 

The victim told this reporter that Umaru invited her home to greet his wife who had just given birth.

“After persuading me to follow him home to greet his wife who had just given birth, I responded that the entire class had plans to visit as a group.  I didn’t want to go with him without informing my parents, so I won’t be beaten for coming home late,” Hassana recalled the incident with a face full of regrets.

“But he insisted that we should go together and I obliged because he promised we wouldn’t take long.”

The story changed on getting to his house.

Upon getting to the house, Hassana asked about Umaru’s wife and the newborn but was told they were in the bathroom. Minutes later, she discovered that Umaru was lying.

She became agitated and attempted to escape. Unfortunately, it was too late. Umaru dragged her into the inner room and despite her refusal and loud cries for help, Umaru overpowered and raped her.

“He went into an inner room, he pushed me on the mattress and removed my clothes. I was screaming but no one could hear me. When he was done, I told him God will judge him and he replied saying I am a useless coward,” she recounted.

Umaru later drove his victim home.

Umaru’s heinous act contravenes Section 283 of the Nigerian Penal Code Act which states that “whoever commits rape shall be punished with imprisonment for life or for any less term and shall also be liable to fine”. Section 1, subsection 2 of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, 2015, also states that the offence of rape is punishable with life imprisonment.

Double Trouble

For returning home late, Hassana’s mother beat her until she was rescued by a neighbour. She tried telling her mother about her plight but could not due to fear.

Months after Hassana’s horrible encounter, she became ‘sick’. The teenager was treating fever until one of their neighbours, a nurse, advised her parents to take her for a pregnancy test.

The result came out positive.

Not satisfied with the first result, she requested another test and it was the same. To be absolutely convinced, Hassana went for immediate scanning.

“It was after the test results confirmed that I was six months pregnant that I remembered my encounter with Umaru,” she said.

The test results left Hassana and her mother traumatised. In tears, the teenager narrated the encounter with Umaru to her mother.

Mother and daughter eventually confronted Umaru — and he did not deny any wrongdoing. Instead, “he pleaded with us not to discuss it at his residence”.

Hassana, now with a two-year-old child, a result of Umaru’s violent act, said he urged her to abort the pregnancy. But her mother declined.

Following the refusal of the victim and her mother to accept Umaru’s proposal, he became nonchalant, leaving Hassana to carry her cross alone. Even when she gave birth, Umaru was nowhere to be found.

“He only gave money for ante-natal once or twice. He was called when I finally delivered the baby but all he offered was a prayer for the child before ending the call. He has since refused to make himself available,” she added.

Today, Hassana finds living difficult. She can only make ends meet because a non-government organisation, Nana Khadijah Centre, in Sokoto gave her grinding and tailoring machines. Currently, she is learning how to make clothes.

Hassana was in SSS2 when the incident happened. The pregnancy took her out of school, and till now, her hope of going back to school is uncertain.

Forced out of school 

Like Hassana, Racheal* was raped by one Korede Adewumi on July 10, 2020, and it almost ended her education in Ile-Ife, Osun state.

She was preparing for her Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) when the incident happened and it nearly brought an end to her education.

Giving an account of the incident, Rachel’s sibling, who asked to be anonymous to avoid stigmatisation and backlash, said her sister was raped while hawking ‘aadun’, a snack popular in the south-west.

“Korede who sat on the verandah of his house called my sister to sell him aadun,” she said.

“After buying, he pretended to go back inside and get money. When he finally came out, he stood by the entrance of the front door and asked her to come for her money.”

She stepped forward to collect the money but was forcefully dragged into the building.

“Unfortunately, no agile person was home at that time to rescue her.  The only person at home was an old feeble landlord. Before the landlord could get to other neighbours for help, Korede had perpetrated evil and taken to his heels,” the victim’s sibling added.

Following the attack, Rachel avoided school for months and could not write the general examination with her colleagues.

The victim’s family reported the matter at Aagun police station after a medical test at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital confirmed forced sexual intercourse.

Korede absconded for weeks but was later apprehended and charged to court.

According to WHO (2002), about one third of all the women in Nigeria have at one time or the other been a victim of violence in its diverse forms.

Out of Court settlements

In Hassana’s case, her parents settled the issue out of court on the grounds that the class teacher would bear the responsibility for the upkeep of the child. This was because there was no legal framework in Sokoto state to protect young girls like Hassana.

Section 1 of the VAPP Act defines rape as “when a person intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person with any other part of his/her body or anything else without consent, or with incorrectly obtained consent where such consent was obtained by force/threats/intimidation, false and fraudulent representation as to the nature of the act, use of substances capable of taking away the will of that person or impersonating a married woman’s husband in order to have sex with her”.

Her lawyer, Rashida Muhammad said “since the VAPP Act had not been passed at the time, we had to make do with the law of the land. The least we could do then was to get the man jailed, but for the interest of her child and his upbringing, we had to settle the case out of court”.

In 2020 alone, a total of 411 rape cases were recorded in Sokoto, one of the 11 states in Nigeria with a high level of child abuse that had not yet domesticated the Child Rights Act passed into law in 2003 when the reported incidents happened.  However, in August 2021, the state heaved a collective sigh of relief upon the passage of the VAPP Bill in Sokoto — six years after the law came into effect in Nigeria.

When Hassana was raped, Sokoto was yet to pass the VAPP Act and the Child Rights Act was still hanging. But on November 11, 2021, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, the Sokoto governor, signed the Child Protection Bill and the VAPP act into law as passed by the state assembly.

Justice, it seems, is an elusive ideal for victims of sexual violence in the state. Data from Nana Khadija Centre revealed that even after the passage of the laws, rape figures are still increasing. 

In Sokoto, less than two percent of girls finish secondary school and the literacy rate for women is just 10 percent compared with 40 percent for men.

Dataphyte learnt that after several court adjournments, coupled with courts shut down in  2021, Racheal’s family got tired and succumbed to the plea of the alleged rapist. The case was later settled out of court although the terms of the settlement are not known to Dataphyte. Dataphyte tried to contact Korede for comment over the allegation but his phone numbers were “switched off”. A source who knows about the case later told Dataphyte that Korede had changed his number more than twice and he had also packed out of Ile-Ife.

Hassana and Racheal’s ordeals are just two out of many other cases of sexual violations happening to the girl-child across Nigeria. During a webinar organised in December 2021 by the Lagos State Directorate of Citizens’ Rights, Iyabode Ogunniran, an associate professor of public law, noted that one out of every four girls experiences sexual violence before 18 years of age.

‘Worrying Data’

According to Nigerian laws, underage persons are unfit to give consent for sexual acts, and so, even if it were to be proven that an underage victim gave consent, it would be regarded as rape. In such a circumstance, it is referred to as statutory rape.

The Criminal Code Act, the Penal Code Act, VAPP Act, and the Child’s Right Act all prescribe that anyone who commits the offence of rape is liable to life imprisonment.

Yet the trend persists unabatedly, further worsening the school enrollment rate of girls.

A 2021 Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report on women and men in Nigeria highlights the gender inequalities that exist in the country. Girls’ enrollment in primary schools in the country was 47.50 percent for 2016 and 2017 and slightly increased to 48.39 percent in 2018. In the years under review, more than half of the students enrolled in primary school were boys.

It is the same story for enrollment into junior secondary schools nationwide. More than half of the students who enrolled from 2016 to 2018 were boys. In 2016, 46.69 % of females enrolled into JSS. The figure slightly increased to 47.42 and 48.31% in 2017 and 2018 respectively.

Female enrolment into senior secondary school was 45.99 percent in 2016 and increased slightly to 46.74 percent in 2017.

According to the Centre for African Justice, Peace and Human Rights, Nigeria has approximately 14 million out of school children, making it the highest number in the world — and girls make up 60 percent of this number.

A 2018 finding contained in the Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey revealed that overall, 36 percent of females in Nigeria have no education compared to 27 percent of males.

In a journal titled ‘Gender Based Violence against Women and Its Implication on the Girl Child Education in Nigeria’, the authors submit that violence against the girl-child has serious implications on her education.

According to UNICEF (2010), six percent of female children were absent from school because of physical violence. In a further analysis, more girls (seven percent) than boys (two percent) were absent from school due to domestic violence in northern Nigeria in the year 2010 — and absenteeism leads to dropping out. Umarnah (2005) opined that the rate at which the girl child drops out of primary and post-primary institutions in Nigeria is alarming and ascribed violence as one of the major reasons.

Similar Trend across Nigeria

Media reports show that there has been an increase in cases of sexual abuse among secondary school girls.

In June 2020, the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT) arrested a 62-year-old school proprietor identified as Emmanuel Madueke over the alleged sexual assault of a 14-year-old student.

The incident occurred during the Children’s Day celebration at Megland Comprehensive School, Lekki.

Findings made by the team during the visit revealed that Madueke had developed cordial relations with the student before the assault took place.

“He kissed her on her lips but she was able to push him away and ran out of his office. She (student) added that since the incident, she had made every effort to distance herself from the proprietor,” the DSVRT said.

Investigations further revealed that other students might have fallen victim to sexual harassment at the hands of the proprietor.

On the 22nd of June 2021, Oliver Amugo, a resident doctor at Queen’s Hospital in Abuja, called Vivienne Akphager on phone to inform her about the death of her 14-year-old daughter, Keren-Happuch Aondodoo Akpagher. The doctor revealed that dead spermatozoa and a broken condom were found in her daughter’s urine.

Keren-Happuch was a boarding student of Premiere Academy, Lugbe, Abuja until her death. The school has denied the allegations that Keren was raped under its supervision.

Till date, the police are yet to conclude their investigation, claiming that revealing the autopsy to the public will jeopardise the investigation.

‘Survivors Denied Justice’

In a report titled ‘Nigeria: A Harrowing Journey; Access to Justice for Women and Girls Survivors of Rape’, Amnesty International said most survivors are denied justice, rapists are avoiding prosecution, and hundreds of cases of rape are going unreported due to pervasive corruption, stigma and victim-blaming in the country.

Amnesty’s research – which was carried out between March 2020 and August 2021 – reveals how harmful cultural stereotypes, failures of law enforcement to investigate rape cases, toxic misogyny and insufficient support for survivors, have created a culture of silence and impunity that continues to fail hundreds of women and girls every year.

Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International Nigeria, said “concrete actions have not been taken to tackle the rape crisis in Nigeria with the seriousness it deserves. The system continues to fail children by making it increasingly difficult for survivors to get justice while allowing perpetrators to get away with gross human rights violations.

“The fear of not being believed – or even being blamed for being raped – is creating a dangerous culture of silence that prevents survivors from seeking justice. It is unacceptable that survivors of rape and other forms of gender-based violence face such a torturous ordeal to get justice, which only adds to their pain.

“The ‘state of emergency’ has proven to be an empty declaration, which has so far done nothing to protect women and girls in Nigeria.”

According to Aworanti Salvation Grace, founder of Voices Against Rape and Sexual Harassment (VARSH Foundation), “over the years, there have been a lot of cases reported of sexual abuse in secondary schools, and sadly it increases daily as female students are exposed to sexual harassment and assault from either their teachers or their male colleagues. Sad truth is, our girls are not safe anywhere. The school which is supposed to be a place where good values are taught has drastically been a place where menace like sexual abuse dwells.

“At VARSH Foundation, we believe everyone is a meaningful stakeholder in fights and curbing sexual abuse in our society, and the advocacy goes beyond creating policies only, but also ensuring justice to victims and providing for the mental needs of victims. It’s just beyond Advocacy, it’s beyond the online trends.  We need the creation of an amplified policy that’s beyond Advocacy but connects advocacy with securing justice and showing solidarity for victims/survivors”.

Names marked * have been changed to protect the subjects’ identity

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This report, originally published by Dataphyte, was facilitated by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) under its Report Women initiative with support from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).