.Osun moves to stop female circumcision
From CLEMENT ADEYI, Osogbo
FEMALE Genital Mutilation (FGM), otherwise known as female circumcision, is one of the age-long cultural practices in Africa. Investigations revealed that FGM originated from ancient Egyptians and practised across 28 countries in Africa as well as a handful of countries in the Middle East.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), defines it as all surgical procedures involving partial or total removal of the female external genitals or other injuries on the female genitals for cultural and non-therapeutic purposes.
Investigations confirmed that the traditional societies that engage in it do so to subdue women’s sexual libido with a view to guiding against sexual rascality and promiscuity. They also believe that genital mutilation whereby the most sensitive part of a woman’s sexual pleasure organ, the clitoris, is removed, has the potentialities of ensuring virginity, nymphomania and to ensure female modesty and chastity among them.
FGM is still being practised in several communities in Nigeria today, despite that eyebrows raised against it by government, NGOs and human rights agencies. The savage practice is carried out in unhygienic environments, especially in the living rooms of the old people that undertake the craft. This has not only brought untold pains to the victims but has also subjected them to health risks and problems.
Research has shown that the major health crises associated with FGM include Vesico- Vagina Fistula (VVF), Recto-Vagina Fistula (RVF), urinary incontinence, infection, bleeding and mortality, tetanus, sepsis urine retention as well as sexual dysfunction. Other effects of FGM include painful sex, frigidity, loss of passion for sex and divorce.
Though the administration of Goodluck Jonathan slammed a ban on it, the practice continues in different states with impunity, especially in the remote areas due to superstitious beliefs, ignorance and insufficient monitoring by the task force and law enforcement agents.
Nigeria has the highest number of FGM cases across the globe. According to UNICEF report in 2015, Nigeria has about a quarter of the world’s estimated 115-130 million circumcised women.
Daily Sun confirmed that Ebonyi, Ekiti, Imo, Oyo and Osun states stand out among several others still practising FGM. Osun is said to have the highest percentage. Following the health risks involved and the common belief that it is crude and anti-human, series of campaigns are on to eradicate it.
Last year, the wives of South West governors organised a summit, courtesy of United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) in Osun State for a high level advocacy to ensure total eradication in their states.
Mrs. Aduke Obelawo, the Osun State coordinator on the crusade and activities against FGM, said stakeholders had been coming together to win the war against the menace. According to her, the state House of Assembly passed a bill in 2005, prohibiting the practice. She disclosed that the Ministry of Women Affairs as well as the Ministry of Health were also in the vanguard of the campaign because of the health implications of the practice and the social implications faced by the victims.
Other NGOs such as Inter-African Committees in Osun State, she added, are also a part of the sensitisation programmes against the practice and also provide alternative means of livelihood for the ex-circumcisers that have dropped the knives across the local government areas of the state.
She said in 2014, Nigeria joined UNFPA-UNICEF joint programmes to accelerate the agenda on FGM eradication which, she said, was initiated by 15 African countries, including Senegal, Uganda, Somalia, Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Mali, Mauritania and Eritrea.
Osun was recognised as having the highest rate out of the four states which have higher rates of prevalence. Among them are Ebonyi, Oyo, Ekiti and Imo. So, Osun became UNFPA-focus state and started witnessing campaign activities, which centred around advocacy and visits to traditional rulers to talk to their subjects.
Obelawo added that certain local government areas and communities also became focus areas since the entire state can’t be covered at a time. In the process, there was a community dialogue with traditional circumcisers to stop the practice:
“We drummed into their ears the negative effects of FGM and the need for its total eradication. Though it is culturally embedded, they saw the reasons for the eradication and complied. We also dialogued with the youths, the traditional institutions, cultural groups and the artisans. There was a declaration to the effect, which they signed in compliance. About 20 communities have been visited.
“Plans are underway to inaugurate FGM champions who, from time to time, will pay door to door visits to ascertain FGM status in each family where there could be resistance. It was ignorance that made the circumcisers to go into the practice. That is why UNFPA has to embark on community-based social change programmes to educate the people on the negative implications and the need to stop the practice.”
Obalewo, however, could not confirm whether the practitioners have actually dropped the knives: “It is difficult to conclude that it has been abandoned totally because there could be secret practices, especially in the hinterlands. But based on the law against it if anybody is caught and warned or given an option of fine but violates the law again and is caught, he or she goes to jail.”
She said deaths recorded due to excessive bleeding during child birth were due to the practice as victims have to give birth through Caeseran Section since the vulva can’t expand normally because it had been tampered with and the vagina becomes too narrow for the head of the baby to pass through. Another danger is infection, which she said, could block the woman’s fallopian tube and renders her infertile.
Daily Sun’s visit to one of the most popular circumcisers who lives with her octogenarian husband in Moku Compound, Odo-Ogbe, Ile-Ife, revealed how the couple engaged in the practice to earn a living.
Though a septuagenarian, vivacious Christiana Fayomi who painted a vivid picture of the trade she learnt under the tutelage of her husband, said it had remained her only means of livelihood until the state government wielded the big stick against it in 2014 with a legislation to outlaw it:
“It was my husband who taught me the craft when we got married because he was into both male and female circumcision. It took me only three months to master the trade.
She, however, disclosed that her decision to learn the trade was, however, due to a circumstance beyond her control -The Ife/Modakeke genocide in 1997, which lasted till 2001:
“We never expected the crisis that broke out between Ife and Modakeke then. We were in despair because we lost our farmland that used to be the only source of our family’s livelihood. Our children in Lagos could not send money to us because of the crisis because all the banks had shut down. So, we resorted to circumcision for survival. I used to charge N50.00 per head. But I charged between N1,500 and N2,000 until recently when the campaign by government agencies and NGOs to stop it began.”
Madam Fayomi who disclosed that she started the trade in 1987, however, said that she stopped the practice about four years ago after government and UNICEF issued a stern warning to every circumciser never to indulge in it any more. Though she joined the crusade against the menace, she admitted that she fell to a temptation and did one in January this year before UNICEF invited her for a sensitization programme:
“After the programme, I stopped it finally. I was invited because I was the most-sought-after circumciser in Ile- Ife. Since then, I have become an active member of the campaign team against FGM.”
Until the banning of FGM and male circumcision, there was an association of the practitioners in Ile-Ife, which comprised about 60 male and female members. Fayomi attributed the practice to age-long custom and belief:
“It is a culture passed down from our fore fathers to the present generation. Though I cannot say categorically what the reason is, I learnt that it is intended to control sexual rascality among the females.
“There was a girl who stayed with a friend of mine who happened to be her aunt. She had already grown up before we discovered that she wasn’t circumcisied. The aunt informed me that they were preparing for the lady’s wedding and that there was need to do the circumcision for her before getting married. As a result, I did it on that day without any complication.”
She basked in the euphoria of her dexterity in the practice: “I used to spread their legs and hold the clitoris between my two fore fingers and cut the tip of it and it’s all over in a jiffy. Immediately, they clap their thighs and begin to cry agonizingly. Then I apply potassium on the wound so that it can heal fast.”
Explaining how she attracted small girls to herself without suspecting before cutting them, she said: “I played tricks with them. First, I played around with them bought biscuits for them to win their trust. Already armed with my small scissors, I would spread their legs and smartly spot the clitoris and cut off the tip and the job is done.”
Madam Fayomi was so confident of her trade, boasted that she was able to cut not less than three girls per day. She, however, lost count of girls she circumcised since she started the trade.
According to her, before embarking on cutting, the potassium and komdi must be on ground as they are needed instantly. She said they are sold for between N200 and N500:
“Once they are applied on the circumcised part, bleeding would stop immediately and afterwards the victim would start applying engine oil to prevent stiffness whenever the wool on the sore is due to be removed. It is until after three days that the circumcised person could take a bath.”
She lamented that she is jobless as she now depends on her children for survival. Her husband, Isaiah, also shared his experiences: “I was only 12 years old when I started. I used to follow my boss about at that time.”
Pa Fayomi, an octogenarian said he used to charg a paltry sum of N20 and N30 about 10 years ago, depending on the age of the person involved. But in the recent years, he charged between N1,500 and N2,500, depending on the age and family background of the person involved. Though he stopped the practice due to the campaign against it, he said that he still engages in male circumcision.
Investigations indicated that after cutting the tip of the clitoris, it is wrapped in a piece of paper and given to the parents of the victim to be taken home and put in a mouse’s hole. If it is eaten by mouse, it means the girl will bear many children because the mouse itself is a species that bears many children.
A victim of FGM who introduced herself as a university student spoke on condition of anonymity: “I am a victim of FGM. But I don’t think it has made any difference. I don’t feel shy. I must speak my mind. I am very sexy. I only try to control myself not to go out of hand. But as for FGM, forget it. It is the hormones and chromosomes in one’s system that have the final say when it comes to the issue of arousal. Full clitoris or not, you can be horny if you are in the mood.”
This confession is in tandem with several studies by the United Nations agencies that FGM is neither an antidote for sexual rascality nor chastity. But two others did not agree with the studies.
Another victim: “I was about 16 years old when mummy took me to a circumciser to do it for me. As at that time, it was a common practice in our village. It was a pride among girls in those days. If you didn’t do it, it was like you were not a complete woman and treated as an outcast. I felt great when it was done for me.
“I never knew that the reason was to reduce one’s sexual urge or to subdue sexual promiscuity. After it healed, I discovered that I was no longer feeling sexy like before. Even up till now, it takes a long time for me to be in sex mood when my husband is playing with me. I am still regretting it.”
Another victim: “I don’t enjoy sex with my husband at all because of pains. When he enters into me, I feel pains all over me. I didn’t even know until one of my friends who is also a victim told me her experience. According to her, when she complained to her mum that her husband wanted to divorce her because she could not satisfy him sexually due to pains during intercourse, her mum told her that the pains were due to the genital mutilation she had when she was growing up.”
Another woman: “I knew when female circumcision was still in vogue in my village when I was growing up. I was in secondary school then. They were doing it for most of my friends. But whenever my mum wanted to take me to the circumciser, I would disappear from home. That was how she left me alone. I am lucky that I didn’t do it.
“May be, that is why I am very sexy. With a little touch by my husband, I get in the mood, especially when he fingers my clitoris. When I ask my friends that did it, they complain that it takes time for them to be put in sex mood when their husbands fondle their half clitoris.”