Access to justice in Nigeria is still poor especially for women victims of violence, Osai Ojigho, country director of, says in this interview with PREMIUM TIMES’ Chiamaka Okafor where she talks about AI’s latest research, ‘The Harrowing Journey, Access to Justice for Women and Girl Survivors of Rape’.
This covered nearly two years of study by Amnesty and partners with regards to the shadow pandemic that arose following the COVID-19 lockdown. We discovered that quite a number of domestic and gender-based violence, in general, were raised but for sexual violence, particularly rape, was quite prevalent during this lockdown.
Sadly, our research shows that many victims never even got that far as to getting their perpetrators investigated and punished. Several of the people who contributed their stories to us shared how disappointed they were with the police’s handling of their cases. If the police in their line of questioning are not able to gain the trust of the survivors and their families, they are most likely not to continue with the process. Also, if cultural bias towards female victims continues to operate in the minds of the officers who are supposed to protect and provide service for them. Even in hospitals, there were stories of victims being uncomfortable during examinations, talked down on, victims being shamed for what happened to them.
Sadly, many women who were impacted as a result of their SGBV experience have lost their lives and in our report, we documented the stories of Uwa, Barakat, of the young 11-year old and also the story of Karen here in Abuja who died as a result of injuries resulting from rape. A lot of the activities we incorporate now are targeting community-based level intervention. The other is moving from policy to action; our advocacy with policymakers like at the National Assembly, with the Ministry of Justice, is about finding concrete means to actualise this declaration that the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, for example, made and by the attorney general of the federation.
And that is why I like the intervention championed by the European Union and other partners for special courts to be created by the government in order to tackle this issue of rape and SGBV in our society. Amnesty International consistently condemns any act of violence and violations, and criminal activity, which we denounce, but we continually invest our time and energy in raising the voices of those who are not close to power.
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