Sexual and Gender-based Violence, SGBV, is on the increase in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, despite the domestication of Violence Against Persons Prohibition, VAPP Act signed in 2019 by President Muhammadu Buhari. Seun DUROJAIYE reports the travail of victims of SGBV during the lockdown in Abuja.

ON May 10, in Nyanya, a satellite town in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT Abuja, during the COVID-19 lockdown period, 14-year-old Angela Hosana picked the phone of her guardian, who was observing siesta and dialled a number. After a brief exchange, she hung up, stepped out of the house and stood by the gate. She remained there for several minutes, agitated.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OLkRrLvgR8

It was a Sunday.

As she waited, one of the other girls in the house noticed her anticipation and asked why she was outside.

“Nothing,” she responded, adjusting her red dress as she looked away while still waiting.

Hours passed. Then, a car pulled up. Hosana recognised who it was and she climbed into the front seat. Once the door was shut, Anna’s friend, 31-year-old Emmanuel Kamalu, drove off.

The car came to a stop as they approached a lonely road. Kamalu advised that they move to the back seat and Hosana obliged. As they sat together at the back of the car, Kamalu raped her.

“He pulled my dress. Then he removed my pants. He pulled his trouser also and he held me tight and put me on his legs,” Hosana told The ICIR.



It took several hours before she returned home to her guardian, Joy Ogbonna, who had been worried about her whereabouts. After long persuasion, Hosana revealed that Emmanuel Kamalu, a neighbour of theirs, had slept with her.

Ogbonna needed a confirmation and Kamalu, who is married, with a son never denied he raped the minor. At her insistence, he agreed to visit a hospital with Hossana for tests.

On the way to the hospital, they were intercepted by military officers who were enforcing the lockdown curfew. Upon hearing the case, the officers, driven by moral rage, descended on Kamalu, only releasing him after he had sustained several bruises and cuts.

“The officers made him strip and they started beating him up. They asked him to submerge himself in a pool of dirty water and didn’t want to release him. They asked if I could drive and when I said yes, they asked me to go without him.

“But I refused because he also had to get tested so we could gather evidence. We spent over three hours at the checkpoint before they released us,” Ogbonna recalled.

When they arrived Nyanya General Hospital hours later, they were greeted by another obstacle. The doctor on duty refused to attend to them, demanding that they first get a police report. It was around 10:00 pm.

As regular practice, following an implicit rule of the Nigerian police, hospitals often demand a police report before treating victims of assaults or accidents, even in cases of emergency, a practice which Anjuguri Manzah, FCT Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), describe as outdated.

Hospitals are now mandated to treat all patients including those with gunshot wounds without a police report, he said.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/one-too-many-in-abuja-sexual-and-gender-based-violence-happens-frequently-but-perpetrators-often-walk-free/