TNE: What exactly is Female Genital Mutilation?
Female Genital Mutilation, in lay man’s language, female circumcision, is the act of removing a part of or the whole of the external female genital organ in an assumption that doing so would make the woman in future not be promiscuous. The parts removed either partially or in whole are the clitoris, labia minora (inner part of the vulva) and the labia majora (outer part of the vulva).
TNE: So does the removal either in part or whole make a woman less promiscuous?
I will answer the question first and then give some explanations. Female circumcision does not make a woman less promiscuous because of what we know and understand about the physiology of sexuality. The part that is removed is just part of what enhances sexuality. From what is known now, there’s a lot that adds up or leads to a person being promiscuous. Research has shown that a lot of even the sex workers have been circumcised.
TNE: So the part of the genitalia that is removed actually has nothing to do with a woman being promiscuous?
That’s right. It doesn’t.
TNE: What are the effects, if any, of Female Genital Mutilation?
Like I said, it was done in the olden days based on an assumption. But with the knowledge and advancements in science and medicine, we know now that what was presumed to be the reason for the act is not correct.
Meanwhile, there are so many harmful effects that arise from the act. First and foremost is the trauma that goes with it because it is done in a very crude way without analgesia. Imagine when you have a small wound how painful it is not to talk of circumcision without analgesia and the part of the body that is removed during circumcision is very sensitive because a lot of nerve organs are found there. So the pain that a woman feels if anything happens there is very excruciating.
So we have circumcision being done in a crude way, without analgesia, by very old women with crude, rough and unsterilized instruments; that leaves the woman with serious trauma.
Then the pain that the woman will go through, the infection that often follows the procedure, the excessive bleeding; all these can only be imagined and I’m talking about immediate bacterial infections. There are other infections that may have a far more reaching, harmful and detrimental effect on the woman, like HIV/AIDS because the instruments being used are not sterilised.
Those are the effective aspects. Then the healing process; most times when the local bacterial infection subsists, that place is healed with scarring and you and I know that the scarred tissue is not pliable, you know the tissues of the skin are pliable, but the tissue around the perineum is supposed to be softer, even more soft during the period of pregnancy and when a woman wants to deliver. But with a circumcised woman that effect is not there because scarred tissues do not relax. So when that woman grows up, first and foremost she will have problems when she wants to start having sexual relations, yes because that place is scarred; the man will also have problem penetrating and when he penetrates there’ll be trauma, blood, bruises and cuts because of the scarred tissue that is not pliable. Eventually, it can cause infertility. The woman will even be afraid to meet the man, so that can cause a lot of problems for the couple.
Assuming that after that the woman takes in, during labour the woman is exposed to what we call obstructed labour, the cervix area will not dilate the way it is supposed to be. So these are mostly the ones that may eventually end up giving birth through caesarean section, or you now have to give them a very big episiotomy, which also has its problems when it comes to the healing process. The harmful effects are so multiple; the immediate and later. A woman who has been subjected to Female Genital Mutilation, throughout her life, is condemned to a life of pain and sorrow.
TNE: You said it was done in the olden days based on a wrong assumption, do people still carry out the act or has it been eradicated?
It is very much in practice that is why the Society of Gynaecologists of Nigeria takes it as part of our project to enlighten the public on the dangers of the act. There are particular areas in the South West where it is still very rampant. In the South-East, it is still practiced in parts of Ebonyi State. The part of Yoruba land where I said it is still practiced, they even do it with their children abroad, it is that bad even till now; that is why the medical authorities in the United Kingdom (UK) had to issue a warning that any registered medical practitioner caught doing it would have his or her licence seized.
What they tried to do in the UK was to co-opt the medical practitioners into the practice so that it would be that it was done medically; and they will claim that everything was done clinically. But from my opening statement, we know that this thing (FGM) has no advantages, it doesn’t add any value to a woman’s life, but rather, has a thousand and one disadvantages and we are in the era of what we call evidence-based practices. When there’s no evidence that a medical practice has any advantage, just discard it, that’s the era we are in now in medical practice. The Yorubas I was talking about wanted to ‘medicalise’ female circumcision, but the UK government had it curbed very early.
We have not got to this point but there’s a lot of enlightenment going on.
TNE: Can you give us some statistics to drive home the seriousness of FGM in Nigeria?
Available statistics show that ¼ of the estimated 115 – 130million circumcised women in the world are in Nigeria, making Nigeria the highest absolute number of FGM worldwide. The prevalence rate in Nigeria is about 41% among adult women; the highest prevalence rate is in South-South which has 77%, followed by South-East with 68% and South-West with 65%. The prevalence rate is low in the Northern part of Nigeria but where it is practiced, it’s the more severe type that is done.
TNE: Do you see us getting to a point here in Nigeria where FGM is totally eradicated?
It depends; a lot of things in Nigeria depend on the people in authority. If the people in authority get involved, especially the health authority – if the Ministry of Health in all the states take it as a point of duty to create enlightenment and awareness programmes on the harmful effects of FGM and get them to the villages, hospitals, town hall meetings, village meetings, churches, mosques, social media and schools, then we will be close to eradicating it. I don’t know about the current governor’s wife in Lagos State but a lot of governors wives used to take that as their pet projects with a lot of enlightenment; but still our ‘literate population’ are still very uninformed and that is the problem.
Other ways we can eradicate FGM is to criminalise it. There should be a legislation making it a crime to circumcise a female. If that is done, a lot of people will think seriously about doing it. There should also be concerted efforts towards female emancipation through improvement in education and social status of women. The irony of the whole thing is that it is women who perpetuate this evil against themselves. For some women their only reason for carrying on with such acts as FGM is because it was done to them. Women need to begin to fight for themselves and not against themselves.
