FGM comprises of procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. It is often carried out on young girls aged between infancy and 15 years old. Margaret Onah, a Microbiologist by profession, is visiting towns and villages across Nigeria to raise awareness around Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a cultural ideology that is rooted around concepts of femininity and modesty.

Through her NGO, Safehaven Development Initiative, Onah campaigns on issues relating to health and human rights and provides support services to vulnerable women and girls. Her work with the communities involves holding educational workshops on human rights and meetings that help recognise the culture of the community and their reasons for performing FGM. This she does in a non-judgemental manner.

A cultural practice

Awuna Osim, one of the beneficiaries of Onah’s work, says FGM is more of a proud cultural thing in her community of Ikom, Cross River State, which is located in the southern corner of Nigeria. She was 21 when she first heard about FGM.

“FGM is being viewed as a culture, it is believed that a female child who is not circumcised would be promiscuous since the clitoris is the engine room that stirs emotional reactions in a woman,” shares Osim.

“I was eager to be circumcised but my grandma didn’t allow me even though some of her children were circumcised. Her reason was that she no longer agrees with such an ideology that makes it compulsory for a female child to be circumcised because those who were circumcised were promiscuous and it's contrary to what they should be found doing.”

Despite being outlawed in a landmark court ruling in 2015, the practice of FGM is still widespread in Nigeria, with young girls who have reached puberty being cut behind closed doors, especially in rural areas.

More than 200 million girls around the world are affected by FGM, 80% of them are in Africa. In Nigeria, 25% of women and girls aged between 15 and 49 have undergone some form of FGM, making the country the third highest with the FGM burden in Africa.

Those who are found to have gone against the law may face four years of imprisonment or a fine not exceeding $500, or both. However, activists believe the law isn’t properly enforced — and that it loosely attracts violent responses from community members who believe that the practice must be preserved and passed on from generation to generation.

This prompted Onah, who is a trained microbiologist who studied Medical and Laboratory Sciences at the university of Nigeria, Nsukka, to tackle FGM carried out under cultural purposes.

She believes that sex is a fundamental right of all human beings, and that the clitoris for a woman is one of the organs that earns her sexual pleasure. “A lot of women who are circumcised are no longer interested in having sex because it’s not pleasurable to them. So, it’s important to sensitise both men and women about the harmful effects of this practice,” Onah tells AMAKA.

Enjoying the article? Sign up to the mailing list here to not miss out on more!

Sensitising leaders for more informed communities

She and her team visit communities to engage them and their religious leaders. She also takes her awareness campaigns to churches, marketplaces, and schools in the communities they visit. They make use of radio and television jingles which enables them to reinforce their message and reach more communities.

Ahead of founding the Safehaven Development Initiative in 2004, Onah worked as a social health worker, carrying out HIV testing for locals, including commercial sex workers, due the high level of stigma they are often subjected to.

“I saw that HIV was a common disease then, some of them were positive but were not accessing treatment because they were being stigmatised,” says Onah. “I introduce them to the use of microbicides, a product applied inside the vagina or rectum to protect against HIV transmission through sex, so they don’t get exposed to the disease because it was very rampant then.”

Onah aims to end FGM practice effectively through focusing on raising awareness for communities and their leaders for them to better understand the dangers, as well as challenge the deep-rooted ideas of the procedure as a cultural necessity.

Debunking 10 Period Myths With South Africa’s ‘Minister of Menstruation’

So far, only 28 out of Nigeria’s 36 States have passed and domesticated the Act. Still, her goal is to end the practice by 2030 and her efforts are yielding positive results.

In one of the communities where Onah held her sensitisation campaigns in 2008, a woman from the community stood up and announced that they had discovered how harmful their practice of female circumcision was. She further asked if they could redefine their culture by doing the ceremony without cutting women due to some of the harmful effects they experience from the cuts.

In 2009, the team took their campaign to Abanyom, a community in Ikom, Cross River State. During their work there, Onah met Boniface Ndome, a local chief presiding over the Abanyom community, a clan which serves as a host community to Nkarasi.

Chief Ndome is the first traditional leader Onah met during her visit to Nkarasi. Through her non-judgemental sensitisation program, Onah was able to convince the local chief to bring together the traditional leaders from 25 communities in the state, to inform them and have them go back to their communities to implement what they had learnt.

Ndome says the traditional practice has been outlawed in their communities, “The practice is no longer in existence in most of the communities in Ikom, we now initiate the girls into womanhood with a ceremony without necessarily touching her clitoris. If you are caught doing it, you’d be penalised.”

The penalty is a fine of one fatted cow and cash payment of £180 (₦100,000).

Moving forward

During her first five years of campaign, Onah has been able to get 15 community heads to criminalise the practice of FGM, but her work is being hampered by funding challenges.

“Funding has been a great challenge for us. We got the last funding of €40,000 from AmplifyChange before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, people from the communities were calling me because there were so many girls being cut during the lockdown and money was not forthcoming.”

“When we got the funding in 2019, we used it for advocacy in about ten communities, it was also used for capacity building for 20 members from each community, establishment of anti-FGM clubs in each community’s secondary school, media round table, and printing of Cross River State Law against FGM and distribution.”

In 2018, Onah received €25,000 from the Global Media Campaign To End FGM, an organisation that provides funding support to local organisations tackling FGM and child marriage across the continent.

Her goal moving forward is to establish a shelter for girls who have fled from being circumcised in their communities and provide educational support to any higher institution of their choice. “In five years time, we want to be ensured that FGM is totally eradicated in our communities,” Onah says.