By Osarugue Idemudia
Somewhere in a dusty village compound, a young girl winces in pain while her mother turns her face away. Outside, life goes on—traders haggle over tomatoes, children play, the town crier passes by. Inside, another generation is being wounded in silence.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) remains one of Nigeria’s quietest atrocities. Despite national laws, international outrage, and growing public enlightenment, the practice continues to thrive, cloaked in secrecy and cultural justification. In 2015, the Nigerian government passed the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, outlawing FGM across the country. But nearly a decade later, enforcement remains weak, and the act feels more like a suggestion than a deterrent.
A chilling case from Uromi in Edo State tells the story. A 13-year-old girl was subjected to circumcision in secret by an elderly woman known for “preparing” girls for womanhood. The procedure went wrong. The girl nearly died from blood loss before she was rushed to a private clinic. No charges were filed. No one was held accountable. The girl lives—but the trauma, both physical and emotional, lingers.
It’s not just in Edo. From Ughelli to Ikeduru, from Ekiti to Ebonyi, reports continue to emerge of girls—some as young as five—being cut. In Delta State, an eight-year-old girl died in 2023 after her aunt performed the procedure with a blade. Social media users cried out. For a few days, hashtags trended. Then it faded into silence, like many such cases before it.
FGM affects over 20 million girls and women in Nigeria, giving the country the highest absolute number of FGM survivors globally. Still, in many rural communities, the practice is passed off as a harmless tradition—something to preserve purity or prepare a girl for marriage. But what it actually preserves is pain.
Many traditional rulers, respected as moral compasses in their domains, have been slow—if not
