Nigerian Marriages and Trauma of Domestic Violence

(By Wana Udobang) – ‘We are brought up to think suffering this violence is OK’: domestic abuse in Nigeria

Dr Perpetua Mbanefo was just getting ready to drive to her new internship in Lagos when her husband suddenly got upset, seizing her car keys and medical licence. “He said I am becoming too free. Then I asked him for my things back and he got very upset, dragged me and threatened to stab me with a broken bottle.”

Her voice shakes as she talks. The next morning, again as she was preparing for work, he stopped her from leaving the house. “He said I am not going anywhere, [that] he owns me. He started calling me names, like ashewo [slut], and said that I am sleeping with people in my workplace. I didn’t pay attention to that because none of it was true. He has told me that if he decides to lock me up, nobody is going to come and ask because it is a family issue.” 

When he threatened her with an electric iron, Mbanefo climbed into the bed where he couldn’t reach her, but still got a blow to her head that meant she needed to go to hospital. She told the doctor how she’d got the wound. He shrugged, treated her and sent her home again.

Marriage in Nigeria is regarded as a prized attainment, and there is a powerful social stigma around reporting violence, or, worse still, leaving your husband. The data – patchy though it is – suggests that domestic violence is a serious problem, with one national demographic and health survey finding that close to a third of all of Nigerian women have experienced physical violence, which encompasses battery, marital rape and murder, at the hands of their intimate partners. But the same survey found that 43% of women believe a husband is justified in beating his wife for a number of reasons, including going out without telling him, or neglecting the children. 

Most of the women who come to the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT) only want the violence to stop, and will not consider leaving their husband, says co-ordinator Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi; for example one survivor turned into a hostile witness when asked to testify in court. “I think it is the cultural perception attached to a woman who walks out of a marriage. She is seen to be a failure, she is seen to be promiscuous and most times those are the grounds on which these perpetrators [denounce] the woman. So they want to stay in the relationships to keep up appearances. They want to remain Mrs.”

And in many cases there is no support from the family for a woman who is considering leaving her husband. When Mbanefo went to her parents for help after years of abuse her father urged her to drop all the charges filled against her husband, whilst her mother was worried about the family’s reputation. “My mother said they want to return me back so I don’t disgrace her. Even after the beating she said you have to save the face of the family. You have to go back. So I went back.”

Conservative religious doctrine reinforces patriarchal traditions that play into gender-based violence. And other women, who could be giving support, will also enforce the status quo. Vivour-Adeniyi says: “Women are the ones that will tell you, ‘Remain there, submit.’ They’ll tell you you’re not cooking properly.” She adds: “Maybe we are brought up to think that it is OK to suffer this kind of violence.” 

Though hundreds of abused women have walked through the doors of their centre, in 2017, Vivour-Adeniyi and her team secured just 20 restraining orders and five criminal prosecutions. “Nobody wants to be the one to have sent her husband to jail.”

Mbanefo found that, despite trying over and over again on her parent’s orders to make her marriage work, the psychological impact of the abuse meant that she could no longer endure any kind of intimacy with her husband. “At a certain point, if he touched me, I froze up or I just started weeping quietly. I think it felt worse than being physically beaten.” The violence continued to spiral, but without any external support, she felt unable to leave. 

And then in April 2017 her husband took their children away to his hometown in eastern Nigeria. That was the spur she needed: Mbanefo managed to rescue her children, and moved into Hope House, a small shelter for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors run by the faith based non-profit PBO Foundation. 

Vivour-Adeniyi thinks that it’s time to look again at the way marriage is viewed. “A woman is not deemed complete until she is married. [And then] it’s not enough to be married – you need to stay married and have children, obviously.”

And Mbanefo? She is still coming to terms with what has happened. “When you have been beaten by an intimate partner, you might not want to talk about it really because as much as you are a victim, you are still afraid of what the society will say. As a doctor, it seemed as though I wasn’t allowed to say it,” Mbanefo explains.

“At least I work and I earn a salary. What if I was someone that doesn’t have money? What if I was a housewife with no money, no family support? It would have been terrible. Not that it is not terrible … but it would have been worse.”