Nigeria

FGM: An Insult On The Dignity Of Women

By

Okumephuna Chinwe Celestine

I got the first experience of this when I was as young as eight years. Just behind my father’s house in the village I heard a voice of a young girl shouting desperately for help inside a closed door. Out of curiosity and desire to render help I dashed out of my father’s house and stole into the building where the save-my-soul cry was coming from.

I peeped through the keyhole. To the greatest surprise and shock of my life I saw for the first time in my life one of the evils women inflict upon themselves. This is also the greatest and most barbarous of my people’s culture. Inside that conclave were four hefty women; three of them stretching apart the young girl’s legs while the fourth was poking a sharp object in her clitoris. The girl was around twelve years. The whole drama was very painful to her hence her shouting on top of her voice. "What a hell are these devilish women doing to the innocent poor girl?" I queried and concluded that they must be vampires delighting in the sucking of human blood.

It was later that I learnt that in my culture, Igbo culture of the South-Eastern Nigeria of West Africa, women are not supposed to enjoy sex as men. Sex is a prerogative that is supposed to be monopolized by men only. Their ejaculation is more important. In fact they do not care whether women ejaculate or not. They are supposed to be sex toys because of their status as weaker sex and inferior creatures. Children of the lesser God!

To buttress this point and belief my people adopted the obnoxious practice of cutting short the clitoris of every young girl. The belief being that uncut ones make women to enjoy sex more and makes them to be promiscuous. To reduce that libido their clitoris therefore must be cut. That was exactly what they were doing to the innocent poor young girl we met at the outset. Sadly enough it was done by her fellow females giving credence to the fact that woman contributes also to their being dehumanized by the men folk. Poor women! Children of the lesser God!

Today what was being done to the young girl is called FGM. Female Genital Mutilation otherwise known as Female Circumcision is today an epidemic that has become more worrisome than Ebola, SARS and AIDS put together.

This problem is prevalent in Africa and some parts of Asia countries. In Africa according to a pamphlet issued by the Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria it is more prevalent in Djibouti, Egypt, Somalia, Mali, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has the lowest rate. It is also practiced widely among some religions of Asian origin. It is very minimal in Europe.

In Nigeria the practice is at crescendo in the South-Western part of the country. In fact in the South-West and South-South girls are not eligible to marry until they are circumcised. But majority of the Igbo nation of the South-East with few exceptions circumcise their girls within seven days after birth.

It was based on the global concern for the practice that WHO Regional Committee for Africa adopted resolution AFR/RC43/R6 that ordered the regional officers to accelerate routine collection of data on Female Genital Mutilation. This was reinforced during the 47th World Health Assembly of May 1994. The assembly adopted resolution WHA/47/10 that urged members to establish national policies towards abolishing FGM and related practices.

By definition FGM is a practice that involves the cutting off of part or the whole of a female’s clitoris and some other parts of her sex organs whether for cultural or any non-therapeutic reasons. Really, the term is a misnomer, "Circumcision" means "cutting around" and refers to the operation on a boy. For a girl the operation is more an "excision" that is, a partial or a total cutting off of the clitoris, perhaps also cutting away the labia minora, the inner lips of the vulva. This operation performed on girls from one week old to ten years or more, is the milder form of female circumcision.

FGM according to 1995 classification by WHO Technical Committee is of four main types. Type 1 involves the excision of the prepuce (the fold of skin above the clitoris) with or without excision of part or the entire clitoris. It is commonly called "Sunna." Type 11 involves the excision of the prepuce and clitoris (clitoridectomy) together with partial or total excision of the labia minora otherwise known as the inner lip. Type 111 involves the excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation). It is sometimes referred to as "Pharaonic circumcision" or "Sudanese circumcision". To be precise in infibulation which is a more severe operation a razor is used to excise the clitoris by cutting from top to bottom of the small lip (of the vulva) and then the flesh is scraped from the inside of the large lip. Then a paste is applied to ensure adhesion of the large lips by means of acacia thorns. The scar tissue closes the vagina almost completely and when a girl gets married, it has to be opened again, perhaps with a razor blade or by forcing with a penis, which is very painful. Type 1V which the Federal Ministry of Health of Nigeria in collaboration with the World Health Organisation Nigeria identified as unclassified due to the various forms it can come in includes pricking, piercing or incising of the clitoris and/ or labia, stretching of the clitoris and/ or labia, cauterization by burning of the clitoris and surrounding tissue, scarping of tissue surrounding the vaginal orifice (angurya cuts) or cutting of the anterior and sometimes posterior vaginal wall (gishiri cuts), introduction of corrosive substances into the vagina to cause bleeding or herbs into the vagina with the aim of tightening or narrowing it and any other procedure that falls under the definition of Female Genital Mutilation given above.

Types 1 and 2 are the commonest types of FGM. The commonest in Nigeria is Type 1. Type 3 is the most extreme form of FGM. It involves the complete removal of the clitoris and the labia minora as well as the inner surface of the labia majora. The two sides of the vulva are then stitched together with thorns or by silk or catgut sutures so that when the remaining skin of the labia majora heals, it forms a bridge of scar tissue over the vagina. A small opening is preserved by the insertion of a foreign body to allow for the passage of urine and menstrual blood. As the wound heals, the developed scar tissue most often creates a barrier to sexual intercourse and childbirth, resulting in repeated deinfibulation and trauma. It has also been linked to the stillborn.

The skin of vulva and vaginal canal is normally soft and elastic to enable it expand easily during childbirth to allow the baby come out without difficulty. FGM makes the area dense and hard because of scarring and very difficult for child to come out during childbirth. The consequence is stillborn.

Other effects of FGM include bleeding during sexual intercourse, infection due to quack, crude and traditional methods being used, acute and chronic pelvic inflammation emanating from infection at the time of circumcision, infertility due to the blockage of the fallopian tube by infections and inflammation and forming of scar tissue and keloids.

Others are painful and difficult labour, risk of catching blood transmitted diseases like HIV, AIDS, Hepatitis etc, loss of normal sexual function and at times death due to excessive bleeding. In fact according to a UNESCO report, if a girl survives the operation, there are further hazards viz: severe shock from fear and pain; uncontrolled bleeding; tetanus and other infections; painful menstruation during adolescence; infection when the scars are broken after marriage and difficulties during childbirth. In addition, the permanent changes in the female genitalia, the growth of dermoid cyst and the development of bladder fistulae, as well as other pathological condition is capable of affecting the normal sexuality and interfere in marital relationships and can lead to infertility or result in divorce.

FGM is indeed very dirty, barbaric and crude. At times paste mixtures made of herbs, cow dung, hot ashes, barks and roots of trees or other mixtures are rubbed onto the wound to stop bleeding. Foolishly, some tribes in Nigeria perform it on dead women who refused it during their lifetime. Others do it either at the infancy, childhood, during marriage or the first pregnancy.

Reasons for that include; custom and tradition, religious demand, protection of virginity, prevention of promiscuity, increasing sexual pleasure for the husband, family honour, aesthetic reasons, purification, enhancing fertility, giving a sense of belonging to a group and increasing matrimonial opportunities. An Egyptian woman I read about in Awake magazine opined that, "every woman must be circumcised in order not to be oversexed and constantly in a state of excitement". None of these has a medical, intellectual or scientific base.

There is no doubt that FGM is barbaric and evil. All hands therefore must be on deck to eliminate this evil. Enlightenment campaign is very important to educate the masses on the baseless nature of this practice. The Federal, State and Local Assemblies should as a matter of urgency pass a bill to criminalize this act. It will be a right step in the right direction towards saving our women. FGM is sincerely speaking an insult on the dignity of women.

About the Author:

Okumephuna Chinwe Celestine was born in 1977 to a very poor family. Through the combined efforts of parents and personal contributions and hardwork, Okumephuna became a graduate. Okumephuna read Mass Communication (Print Journalism Option) and specialized in Newspaper and Magazine Journalism. At the present Okumephuna is waiting for my call-up letter to begin a one-year National Youth Service Corps programme, which starts on September 8, 2003.

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