‘Enough is enough’: Nigerian women fight sexual harassment and groping in markets

Lagos, Nigeria—Whenever Adanma Ugwunna walks down the road separating Yaba Market from the highway to work, male stall owners, desperate to make sales, grab her by the hand either to lead her toward their goods or, more sinisterly, just to harass her. Every attempt to brush them off often provokes more harassment. Sometimes, they call out “ashawo” (“slut”) as she leaves.

“Even when I’m dressed professionally, they still touch me,” Ugwunna told Women Under Siege. “Whenever I try to resist, they ask if it’s because I’m wearing a suit.”

Sexual harassment is rampant in Yaba and other large markets across Nigeria and, sadly, has always been accepted as commonplace.

“Sometimes, my friends and I go in groups, but these stall owners still grab you and touch you,” said Damilola Marcus, a brand designer who has had her own “terrifying” experiences in Yaba. It was from these experiences that she decided, “Enough is enough.” On October 20, 2018, she founded Market March as a call to action against sexual harassment in the marketplace and took to Twitter to begin organizing a protest march through Yaba.

That day, the hashtag #MarketMarch sparked a nationwide conversation around consent and sexual misconduct. “#Yaba” began trending on Twitter in Nigeria as more women took to the platform to share their own experiences of harassment in the market.

Through Twitter, she recruited a following of marchers, as well as volunteer teams for creative, media, welfare, planning, security, and legal teams to help with organizing the march. And on December 15, around 20 marchers, dressed in yellow t-shirts and armed with banners and megaphones marched from Ojuelegba to Yaba—nearly two miles. Bearing signs that read “Enough is enough,” “Stop touching us,” and “Don’t tell me how to dress, tell them to face their front,” the marchers streamed through the market.

But their reception was a hostile one, as stall owners reportedly pelted them with stones and sachets of water despite the presence of some policemen assigned to protect them. “They called us jobless and said we are prostitutes, they boo’ed us and sang shaming songs after us,” one marcher reported.

A society of entitlement and ‘toxic masculinity’

“Much of this harassment happens by the roadside of the market, and we do not have control over it,” said Chimaroke Dagbor, a stall owner and member of the Yaba Market Committee. Refuting the Market March’s claims, Dagbor said his section does not tolerate any form of abuse on customers as it’s prohibited under the Committee’s constitution, which determines that any offender within the market could be fined up to 5,000 Nigerian naira.

But for Busayo Oni, a patron at the Yaba market, Dagbor’s claim, “sounds regressive and distorted. The fact that [harassment seems to have] reduced since the market protest started is a testament that it’s happening, and that they have control over it.”

“There’s an entitlement to our bodies,” said Marcus, commenting that the normalized sexual harassment experienced in the market is both an expression of toxic masculinity and deliberate dehumanization. “Especially when they use slurs to show their male dominance.”

“Most of these men see women as objects for pleasure, but it’s a violation of their bodily integrity and abuse of their rights,” said Bose Ironsi, founder and executive director of the Women’s Rights and Health Project, a nonprofit promoting reproductive health, rights, and development for women and girls across the country. “It’s rampant in our society and it’s unacceptable.”

A difficult path to legal recourse

Sexual harassment is an especially difficult crime to prosecute and requires such evidence as eye witness testimony, physical traces of the assault, and audio or video recordings before cases can be brought to trial. In most cases, survivors don’t come forward, either for fear of stigma or because they simply do not believe justice will be served.

Chapter IV in Nigeria’s constitution states that every individual is entitled “to respect for the dignity of his person” as well as “to his personal liberty,” but sexual-related offenses are not expressly articulated as violations of either. “Many of the problems are addressed in the 1999 Nigerian constitution but not categorically mentioned,” said Paul Mashote, a human rights lawyer. “You can’t talk about sexual harassment without your right to human dignity, which the Constitution guarantees.” States across Nigeria have built their criminal codes regarding sexual misconduct from the constitution, but these laws can vary wildly, as can the repercussions for violating them.

In Lagos, Sections 261 and 262 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State 2011 explicitly condemn sexual harassment and describe it as “unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favors, and other visual, verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature,” with a potential three-year sentence for offenders. However, conviction and arraignment of sexual harassers in markets is low, and police are not proactive. The main challenge can summarily be described as a cultural one, as many survivors distrust both police and Nigeria’s notorious slow judicial process, and sexual harassment itself is so normalized in Nigerian society.

Nevertheless, grassroots efforts persist

But where the legal system fails, grassroots initiatives persevere in changing the culture of impunity. Market March is looking to pilot a monthly sensitization program in which the organizers will meet with market leadership to educate stall owners about women’s rights and boundaries, and how their behavior affects women’s sense safety and mental health. Marcus hopes this program will leave no room for excuses, nor for disrespect of women’s boundaries in the market. She also hopes that it will earn them male allies in the market to support their cause.

The group is also pushing for an anti-sexual harassment and bullying patrol squad in Yaba to enforce customers’ safety, especially the safety of its women patrons. An online petition in support of the patrol has already received more than 30,000 signatories.

“The future of Market Match that I foresee is an outcome that creates a safer society for women and for all citizens,” Marcus said. “The most important thing is behavior change … so that people become more aware and sensitized to what constitutes harassment and abuse and reject [this] reality.”

More protests at markets across Nigeria are already scheduled for the near future, with a protest march through the Ogbete Market in the southeastern state of Enugu this weekend.