How Nigerian Women Are Protecting Their Digital Spaces From Gender-Based Violence

Since creating her X account at 16, 24-year-old Ore Akinde refrained from discussing women’s rights in Nigeria due to fear of online harassment. By 2020, she was fed up with the problems plaguing women across the country and started speaking up against patriarchy, systemic misogyny, and violence against women.

In one of her early posts about women’s rights, Akinde wrote, “Once again, abortion is the woman’s right any time, any day. I don’t also know why a woman has to wait for [her] husband to sign documents for consent to operate on her body.”

After two years of posting online, Akinde started receiving hate messages online from X users. They went beyond disagreements and trolling; there came a point when she received an average of 50 messages per month from men threatening harm, rape, and death. 

It escalated to a physical confrontation during her final year at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. A schoolmate she had never met until that day grabbed her and began verbally harassing her. “He hounded me, held my hand, and was causing a scene, saying I should back up what I’ve been saying online,” Akinde says, “I had to scream for help before he let go, and I never saw him again.”

What Akinde experienced is part of a growing challenge experienced by Nigerian women online, known as online gender-based violence (OGBV). It is when stalking, bullying, sexual harassment, defamation, hate speech, doxxing, or exploitation are committed by abusers on the internet. In some instances, these acts can extend beyond the digital space; as was the case for Akinde.

Akinde, who is a fiber artist, says her slow fashion business website has been attacked and spammed by several men who object to her online posts. Akinde tells More to Her Story that some of these men had been sending messages on illicit Telegram channels soliciting and offering to pay for intimate images of her in an attempt to “humble” her.

Afraid that these requests might result in deep-fakes of her, Akinde posted less pictures of herself online and has been blocking accounts that make sexist and threatening comments to her. 

“I used to live in constant fear, because I now knew there were grown men hunting for my nudes even though they don’t exist. Anytime I posted a bikini photo, men would say all sorts to me, calling me a sex worker. All these made me feel so unsafe,” she says.

According to Rosemary Ajayi, who is the Director of Digital Africa Research and Safety Lab, many Nigerian men who engage in online sexual harassment, revenge porn, and nonconsensually sharing intimate images take to Telegram channels to do their bidding.

On August 24, Telegram Founder, Pavel Durov was arrested by French police on allegations that the messaging platform lacks adequate content moderation that enables child sexual abuse to be perpetuated on channels created in the app. Weeks after his release, Telegram updated its moderation policy, making it possible for users to report harmful content.

As this wasn’t an option two years ago, Ajayi struggled with getting the sexual content of a female minor removed from a Telegram channel. She could only report the multiple Twitter accounts created by the owner of the Telegram channel. Dropbox, she says, is another place where people upload illicit content and others pay to view it.

Ajayi tells More to Her Story that abusers are increasingly finding ways to circumvent the content moderation set by social media platforms by changing their IP address and using different phone numbers to create multiple accounts in order to catfish, doxx, and stalk victims online.

On November 6, a Nigerian X user with the handle @societyhatesjay revealed he had pretended to be a woman to gain access to a female-only WhatsApp group that was created as a safe space for Nigerian women to discuss feminism with like minds. Unbeknownst to them, the user had been screenshotting their messages. Jay shared images of the private chats on X and doxxed some members of the WhatsApp group while goading his male followers into hate speech, cyberbullying, digital violence, and physical threats. 

Chioma Agwuegbo is a women’s rights activist and the founder of TechHer, which oversees KURAM, a web-based platform that tracks incidents of online gender-based violence. Agwuegbo believes men are retaliating against women’s online commentary on matters like incel culture and patriarchy, and this is why they are carrying out more acts of violence against women.

“What happens in times like this is you see increased violence against women because some men are trying to shut them up,” Agwuegbo says, “The easiest way they see to do so is either by trolling them, leaking [nude photographs of them], or perpetuating lies against them.”

Through her work at TechHer, Agwuegbo created the online gender-based violence tracker Kuram, which means Keep Me Safe in the Nigerian language Tiv. Since March 2023, Kuram has worked with Nigerian authorities and Interpol to provide Nigerian women with digital and legal protection against OGBV. So far, Kuram has handled 21 cases, from Nigeria, the United States, Dubai, China, Turkey, and Spain. Agwuegbo is also partnering with more individuals and organisations to curb the effects of digital violence against Nigerian women, and to raise awareness about the danger of OGBV.

Some Nigerian women say that they do not know how they would navigate protecting themselves online in the event of getting harassed. Juliet Ohahuru-Obiora, the Executive Director of Action Against Child Sexual Abuse Initiative (ACSAI), says minors are even more at risk online because they usually can’t recognize when they’ve been a victim of OGBV, and some of their parents are unaware it has happened.

“[Some] people use the anonymity [online] platforms provide to have conversations with children, coercing and convincing them to share intimate images of themselves which can be used against them,” says Ohahuru-Obiora.

With this in mind, ACSAI joined with the International Association of Internet Hotlines (INHOPE) in January, becoming the first and only internet hotline in Nigeria and the second hotline in Africa to fight against online child sexual abuse. However, Ohahuru-Obiora says more awareness about the dangers and effects of OGBV needs to be done, noting the project has had over 50 reported cases since its launch.

Little data is available on how OGBV has impacted women in Nigeria specifically. According to  a 2022 Statista report, 24 percent of women globally have reduced their usage of the internet because of online abuse. Meanwhile, in a 2020 survey, 39.3 percent of women in five sub-Saharan African countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda) said they were very concerned about their online safety. Yet advocates warn there is little attention from the government to create policies that fight against OGBV.

“Unfortunately, a lot of people feel that as long as nobody was hit or touched it means online gender-based violence isn’t really a big thing,” Agwuegbo says.