#WeAreTired

For the past few days, Nigerian social media users have flooded their pages with images and posts condemning rape because of some particularly tragic incidents. A 12-year-old Nigerian child was raped by 11 men, one of whom is 57 years old. A 22-year-old student was raped and murdered in a church. Even more recently, another teenager was raped and murdered in her house at Ibadan. A 17-year-old girl was ambushed and gang-raped by three armed men in Ado-Ekiti. These are definitely not all the rape cases, just the ones that made the news.

The burden of preventing rape has been placed on women for far too long, and it hasn't yielded any positive results. "Don't wear this", "don't go here", "don't say that", "don't do that". It feels like we're expected to anticipate sexual assault and adjust our behaviours accordingly. And despite these precautions, sexual violence still occurs. Women get raped even if they're at the "right" place at the "right" time, wearing the "right" clothes, doing the "right" things with the "right" people. Women are assaulted in places of worship, schools, offices, streets, markets, public transport channels and even at home. 

Young Nigerian men have a slang "r and b" which means rape and beg. As teenagers in secondary school, these boys "tap current", which involves touching their female peers inappropriately and pretending it happened by accident. Yet, when these assaults happen, women are blamed for it. 

My mum showed me screenshots from Facebook saying that some young girls are bewitched and that makes men attracted to them, basically making the full grown paedophiles victims of toddlers. There is clearly no depth some depraved humans would not descend to victim blame. 

Women are expected to be silent about these things and those that dare to be vocal are shamed and even threatened. The new tactic is for rapists to scare people into silence with threats of legal action. Rape survivors are stigmatised and treated as damaged goods.

In April 2019, the Nigerian Police arrested and assaulted dozens of women in Abuja because they were assumed to be prostitutes - as if that justifies assault. It's hard to get justice in Nigeria, and it’s even harder for rape survivors. They're expected to provide proof of the rape and also be perfect saintly women to incite any form of sympathy. And even right after that, they are often bullied into forgiving and forgetting. Many women don't even bother exposing rapists because the likelihood of speaking up going awry for the victim is very high. In a country like ours, silence is the solace of the victim. 

It's time to shift the focus from policing women to teaching men consent and punishing perpetrators adequately. We've spent so much time advising women on how to exist to avoid being assaulted, yet various forms of sexual harassment and assault are normalised in Nigeria because men are not taught to respect women's bodies. It's almost like a rite of passage. 

Many Nigerian women have experienced throughout their lifetime. Ignoring it won't make it go away. Turning a blind eye would only give rapists room to continue harming women and girls. We've been silent for too long, policing girls and excusing bad behaviour because "boys will be boys". That needs to change. 

Consent should be taught in our schools. There should also be stricter legal and social consequences for rapists. Our constitution needs to protect women even more. We need stronger laws puninishing all forms of sexual violence and these laws should be executed. Nigerians need to stop covering for rapists in their circles. We can't keep protecting these people.

I'm pleased that the conversation has been going on for days, even though I'm sad at it being sparked by tragedies like this. I hope this marks the beginning of change. We need it.