FGM: Recalling the agonising pain of being cut

A routine bathroom run turned to agony for Cecilia Ogore. Four women crowded the bathroom and forced her to lie on the floor, then tied her legs to two sticks. “Two women held my hands, one sat on my chest,” she recalls the horror. At points, she chokes up with tears but manages to continue […]

A routine bathroom run turned to agony for Cecilia Ogore. Four women crowded the bathroom and forced her to lie on the floor, then tied her legs to two sticks.
“Two women held my hands, one sat on my chest,” she recalls the horror. At points, she chokes up with tears but manages to continue her narration.
“Then I felt a very sharp pain between my two legs, and I was circumcised.”
She cried, and bled-a lot. Later she would be confined to a room to recover.
The period in Ikom Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State wasn’t festive, and she couldn’t go out.
“You are expected to go out during festive periods, and show that you are cut, that you are mature,” she explains.
Cecilia is one of thousands of girls cut every day across the country, because that is what their society expects of them. She took the pain for her mother, she was cut and all her neighbours expects that when she comes of age she  will be cut too.
“I couldn’t bear the shame she would go through,” she says. “But then I was too young. I wasn’t given a chance to say no.”
Stella, also from Ikom, didn’t get a chance either. “If you refuse to be circumcised in my [community], you will be forced to be circumcised, because they say it is our tradition.”
On the day her cutting was planned, she went into her bathroom for a bath on her mother’s orders. One woman joined her, then three more, then another.
Her mother pulled a bench and asked her to strip and lay down. Stella refused.
“If you refuse to pull your clothes, you will be forced,” she recalls her mother’s words. She obeyed. And then the pain followed.
“It was a nurse that did the circumcision,” Stella recalls. The nurse cut deep into Stella’s clitoris, and hours of bleeding followed.
“I wasn’t able to stand. One woman held me on either side, and sat me on a bench. They scraped my hair, rubbed a local lotion on my head, and stuck me inside a small room. They said I couldn’t go anywhere, that I would be pampered and  treated like a baby.”
“Female genital mutilation is still going on,” Stella declares. She told her tale as the world watched, and the first ladies of six Nigerian states where female genital mutilation is prevalent.
And Akwa Ibom is not even among the six states with the highest prevalence for female genital mutilation. Preliminary findings by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)lists Osun, Ekiti, Oyo, Ebonyi, Imo and Lagos as having on average 61% of women subjected to female genital mutilation.
And cutting has increased in the South East, North West and North East between 2003 and 2013, according to the National Demographic Health Survey.
The figures put Nigeria in a group of countries where prevalence of cutting hovers at less than 30%, alongside Benin, Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Niger and Uganda.
Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Egypt and Guinea are countries where 90% of women undergo cutting.
“The concern for Nigeria is the number,” says Nkeiru Igbokwe, gender specialist at UNFPA. “Although the percentage is low, the quantum-we have very big population. For Nigeria we have about 19 million women who have undergone FGM (Female Genital Mutilation).”
“A large populace is not fully aware of the magnitude of the problem,” says Uwem Esiet, cofounder and director of Action Health Incorporated, an implementing partner with UNFPA in eradicating FGM.
Economy, religion, custom and social norms combine to fuel FGM. But it is a direct contributor to fistula and maternal mortality in Nigeria, according to UNFPA.
“UNFPA believes FGM is a form of gender-based violence directed at women and girls, because of their gender, and also done with an agenda to dominate, subordinate and be made to feel inferior and incomplete. Society feels a woman who has not undergone FGM will become promiscuous and will not make a good wife,” says Igbokwe.
Confidence wasn’t circumcised until she was 19 when she was four months pregnant with her first child. Her community in Ebonyi believes she couldn’t have her baby otherwise. A baby coming in contact with its mother’s clitoris is a bad thing, and so they cut it off.
“The pain was much, and I couldn’t walk for one week,” she recalls.
“When it was time for me to deliver, I was in labour for one day and the baby did not come out. I was taken to hospital and the midwives noticed that my vagina had closed up due to the circumcision.”
They opted for a Caesarean section. Since then, sexual intercourse with her husband has been painful, and remains painful even after she gave birth.
Rachael Umahi, first lady of Ebonyi, admits cutting of women still goes on, but stopping it will take intense action by communities.
A campaign for zero tolerance and abandoning cutting-fronted by UNFPA and the United Nations Children’s Fund-is looking to gain ground across the world.
Women who have lived through the blunt blades of FGM are adding their voices.
“Because of the pain, I have taken the decision to stand up and fight for the right of the girl-child,” says Ogore.
A move supported by the wife of the president, Hajiya Aisha Buhari, who was represented by the wife of the vice president, Dolapo Osinbajo and wives of six governors to call for an end to female genital mutilation in Nigeria.