Young women lead a movement against sexual violence and patriarchy in northern Nigeria

Sokoto, Nigeria — On the morning of November 25, 2019, Sadiya Taheer and her team were preparing for the #NorthNormal rally, a standstill rally against sexual and gender-based violence to be held at the State House of Assembly in Sokoto, the heart of the over 200-year-old Islamic Caliphate of Usman Danfodiyo and home to the Sultan of Sokoto — the leader of Muslims in Nigeria.

Addressing a spate of sexual and gender-based violence so frequent in northern Nigeria that it is becoming normalized, the rally provided a response. It would be the first of its kind. The rally was a deliberately conceived idea with an organizational structure unlike its parent, the #ArewaMeToo movement — which germinated organically when more than 100 women in northern Nigeria shared their stories of assault using the hashtag #ArewaMeToo on Twitter (Arewa means “north” in Hausa, the regional language).

But when Taheer and her team arrived at the assembly site, police officers attacked them and destroyed their banners, accusing them of “lesbianism” and organizing a rally that promoted LGBTQ+ rights. Even with permission from the police commissioner to hold the rally, Taheer told PUNCH Newspapers, one of the officers said that the commissioner sent him there to ensure that the rally didn’t happen.

“They asked for our phones and I said, ‘Why should we give you our phones?’” Taheer told the Nigerian newspaper. “A police officer wanted to snatch my phone and the banner I was holding, and I wouldn’t give them to him. That was when all the officers came around me and were beating me up.”

During the attack, fellow activist Idris Abbas began to film the assault and was immediately arrested and detained by the police, his phone confiscated.

“From there, I had to go see a doctor. I couldn’t even stand up properly for a whole day,” Taheer said in a video posted to her YouTube channel.

“We were about 150 people in the [organizing] Whatsapp group,” Taheer said, speaking to Women Under Siege over the phone. But only seven people showed up for the rally on that morning. “Either they were paid off or some of them got scared.”

The fight for the VAPP Act

The #NorthNormal rallies were organized by the #ArewaMeToo leaders to be held in eight northern states — Bauchi, Yobe, Abuja, Kano, Niger, Kaduna, Borno, and Sokoto — on November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Participants were asked to stage standstill protests with banners and t-shirts denouncing gender-based violence and sexual abuse in order to push for the domestication of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, or the VAPP Act, which prohibits all forms of violence against persons in private and public life.

In 2015, the VAPP Act was passed into federal law, but its application in Nigeria’s 36 states was restricted unless and until it was domesticated by each state; as such, its provisions could not be applied in states in cases of sexual and gender-based violence without domestication. So far, it has only been effected in 13 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Abuja.

The #NorthNormal movement’s goal is to domesticate the act in all 19 states in northern Nigeria, beginning with the eight states the rally initially targeted.

Prior to the law, rape was defined as a violation only against women; the VAPP Act expands that definition to include men as victims. The act also provides better protection for victims of sexual violence by recognizing the rights of victims of abuse to financial compensation for the first time in Nigeria. Compensation, the amount of which is determined by the courts, serves as a means to cover costs of hospitalization, therapy, and rebuilding the life of the victim.

It also introduces a harsher punishment for offenders by taking away the various maximum penalties for offenses (ranging from five years to life imprisonment) and replacing it with a minimum penalty of 12 years, taking away discretion from judges to grant offenders lesser prison sentences. What’s more, the Act also ensures that convicted rapists will have their details entered into a sex offenders register, a laudable effort in curbing sexualized violence against persons in Nigeria.

The VAPP Act is the first piece of legislation in Nigeria to classify both unlawful anal and oral acts as rape and not sexual assault. It also states that the instrument of rape does not have to be a penis but other body parts — or objects — as well, focusing on the violation of the person’s body when viewing the act of rape.

Standing with LGBTQ+ people in a deeply homophobic society

There is no explicit mention of gender or sexuality in the VAPP Act, but organizers have been pressured by religious clerics to condemn LGBTQ+ persons in order for the movement to garner wider acceptance in society. They — the organizers — have refused repeatedly. “The #ArewaMeToo and #NorthNormal campaigns are against sexual violence and do not alienate or distinguish based on gender or sexual orientation,” said Fakhrriyyah Hashim, who pioneered the #ArewaMeToo movement.

Prior to the #NorthNormal rallies, there were widespread attempts to undermine the protest by spreading rumors that the rallies intended to promote the LGBTQ+ community, tapping into pervasive homophobia in the country, which is also edified in existing legislation in which public displays of affection with members of the same sex is an offense that carries a ten-year jail sentence.

The rumors also served to detract from organizers’ demands and instigate backlash against the leaders of the movement on cultural and religious grounds. Their advocacy was seen to both tarnish and impede upon the fabric of northern Nigerian culture. Once the #NorthNormal group announced their plans for standstill rallies, four months before the date, organizers were receiving calls from people pleading or threatening them to cancel the rallies. It would be safer if they didn’t upset culture and religion, they were told. “I felt like, so, it’s safer for people to continue to get raped?” Taheer said in the video posted to her YouTube channel. “It’s safer for pedophiles and rapists to roam about in the society, [but] not to disrupt the culture?”

Challenging patriarchal culture norms

In northern Nigeria’s conservative spaces, victims of physical, sexual, and emotional violence and abuse have found it extremely difficult to step out from under the stigma associated with their experiences. Shaming women, somehow holding them responsible for their suffering and for enduring abuse, has been the power game in which patriarchy always has the upper hand. Until #ArewaMeToo, young women in northern Nigeria had been especially hesitant to take on men in power for fear of falling into an even worse position in society. But as victims began to share their stories and an appetite for change went mainstream, it has become much harder for men in power to control the cultural narrative.

Young women taking up space — virtual or physical — has been perceived as a threat to traditional, societal, and religious norms. The haranguing and defaming of the activists using Islamic and cultural tenets suddenly became a tool for neutralizing that threat.

Hauwa Shafii Nuhu, head of the #NorthNormal rally in Minna, in Niger State, also received backlash after the rally, after she was seen carrying a placard that read, “Your Penis is Not Above the Law.” In an opinion piece for African Arguments, she wrote: “On Facebook and Twitter, men described me as an apostate, no longer a Muslim, too vulgar, a prostitute, and more. One commenter thought I was shaming all of Arewa, citing himself as a better example of northern values even though he lives abroad. Others counseled parents on keeping their children safe, not from abusers and rapists and molesters, but from activists like me.”

Hassana Maina, who coordinated the #NorthNormal rally in Borno State, has been working to bring sex education to schools, mosques, and Islamic schools in Maiduguri, the state capital, where the Boko Haram insurgency has mostly hit. There, Hassana and her group also experienced conflict with the police withdrawing their permit for the rally, citing security concerns. According to Hassana Maina, a state legislator interceded and allowed the standstill rally to hold within the premises of the State House of Assembly. “But in every other state (apart from Sokoto),” said Maina, “the rally was peaceful and beautiful.”

A seesaw of gains and losses

The #NorthNormal campaign did receive welcome in certain states, with no reported cases of violence outside of Sokoto. In Bauchi State, the speaker of the State House of Assembly, clad in an orange shirt with the #ArewaMeToo hashtag, received the activists and promised support to fight violence against women and children. In Kano, the State House of Assembly expressed their commitment to exploring ways to accelerate the domestication of the VAPP Act.

And in Borno, after continued correspondence between #NorthNormal organizers and state lawmakers after the rally, the group received a copy of a proposed amendment to the state penal code that focused on sexual violence; they were also invited to attend a public hearing to contribute to the draft. The proposed bill increases the punishment for rape to death by hanging; allows the testimony of a witness alone to be adequate evidence for rape trials; and provides punishment for sexual harassment in schools and workplaces.

Meanwhile, Taheer is at the other end of the seesaw in Sokoto. “Lawmakers are not even talking about domesticating the VAPP Act,” said Taheer. “They shut out activists like myself and my colleagues, [who] are locked up or beaten up or have cases of defamation of character.” Still, Taheer and her team remain committed and have continued to build a rapport within communities, especially among students and young girls.

“For #NorthNormal, it is also about creating community response,” said Hashim. “Identifying voices within communities to respond to sexual and gender-based violence by arming them with information.”

While these women continue to navigate the dangers of speaking out and challenging the status quo, they are heartened by how increased awareness is slowly eroding the culture of silence and stigma within Nigerian society. And they’re committed to seeing their demands answered. Maina told us she believes in creating “an environment where rape culture no longer thrives.” Hashim is dedicated to the same. “This advocacy will always be a part of my life.”