Isaac Adeyemo shares how he survived death’s threat for survival of GBV

Isaac Adeyemo shares how he survived death’s threat from perpetrators while demanding for justice for survivors of GBV.

I stood my ground over the cause, made them realize how communities, cities and entire nation could become epidemic when women and girls are not protected to get justice over cases of gender-based violence.

In the mid of this year 2024, my organization had several cases of violence reported and prosecuted to family court that earned them good judgement. And many of them were given the justice demanded for. One of the cases reported was a young girl of 4years old who was raped by an adult farmer over 50 years old who lured this minor with just four African cherry fruits to his room and asked the minor to lie down on his bed and open up her two legs, while he first used his finger to penetrate the girl vagina and finally raped the minor. Immediately we got the report from our Community Response Team (CRT) we started the process of prosecuting with the support of the security operatives,and established medical evidence from hospital and finally to court.  It was in the middle of this case that another case of a female undergraduate who was leaving outside the university hostel, and based on the financial status of the family she could not acquire a good accommodation that was void of attack. The perpetrator broke into the house around 11:30 pm in the night and went straight to the plates rack to take knife to proof to the girl he meant business, asking her to cooperate or face sudden death. This perpetrator had his way with the lady throughout the night with the knife as a threat to kill her if she does not cooperate. He deprived her of going to the toilet to ease herself when she was seriously pressed. she has to urinate on the mattress.  she narrowly escaped death that night with serial sexual intercourse which ended at 5 am. At this time, I couldn’t explain the emotional trauma she went through that day. My life purpose to become a changemaker in this work became more ignited that I resolved within myself that this case will get justice. This horrific experience propelled me toward gender equality advocacy the more and ready to dare all odds. Violence against women is a pervasive problem in Nigerian culture presently, because some traditional rulers who are principal stakeholders in holding forth to patriarchal belief are using their traditional authority and power to influence cases negatively not allowing justice to prevail. The Nigerian Government enacted the violence against persons (prohibition) Act (VAPP) 2015 to protect people against various forms of violence. As of March 2021, it has been adopted in 22 out of the 36 states in Nigeria. The Act seeks to eliminate existing cultural beliefs that initiate and sustain the prevalence of domestic violence in Nigeria. But despite the Act’s enactment, violence still prevails, fueled by impunity and a flawed justice system. 

As at 2021, United Nations Women report states that 48 percent of Nigerian women have experienced at least one form of violence or the other since the COVID-19 pandemic. Also The Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT) reported to have handled 10,007 cases of domestic and sexual violence involving men, women and children from May 2019 to August 2021. 

But because the perpetrator is related to the Royal family in the community, they went to seek for intervention of the king over the rape case, to silent the case, so the wife of the king started with pleading to us to withdraw the case, and I politely declined, it’s not possible, this led her to threaten me, with death or face the consequences of sending the boy to jail. As the wife of the king was threating me, the father and the brother of the girl in question started saying we should withdraw the case because, they don’t have money to pursue the case in court, they were given excuses of the fact that the mother of the girl has died more than ten years ago and that the father has been managing his finances over all his children, so if we don’t want to die a miserable death, we should withdraw the case. It was so difficult to convinced them, that the case is with the government against the family of the perpetrator and that their daughter’s case is government responsibility and not theirs. Retired CP started calling us to withdraw the case too, all these calls are to silence the case which are serious violence that’s prohibited under the VAPP Act law. The perpetrator’s family, whose royal family were also using all sort of machineries to threaten the girl’s family, that if they don’t withdraw the case from the non-governmental organization, the human activist, they will kill their daughter too, if their boy goes to jail. It was so serious to the end, justice was gotten at last via all supporters of GBV. This made me concluded that, silence is violence, our culture of silence is promoting violence in our society.  Cultural silence is a weapon use against victims to compel them forcefully to bear the emotional trauma and psychological problem alone, making them to be challenged in their health. Would you become a GBV advocate member by supporting and amplifying this movement? How about donating to the cause? In what ways are you supporting girls and women to exercise their agency in your communities?