Gender-based violence in primary schools: Nigeria

According to UNESCO, school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) involves acts or threats of sexual, physical, or psychological violence occurring within and around school, perpetrated because of gender norms and stereotypes, and facilitated by unenforced and unequal power dynamics. These acts or threats not only have detrimental effects on the academic outcomes of their victims but also more specifically, hinder a country’s human, social, psychological, and economic development in addition to obstructing the government’s poverty alleviation and peace building efforts.

In Nigeria, there is no known prevalence of SRGBV at the primary school level except as found in the 2014 Violence Against Children Survey (VACS) by the National Population Commission, which showed a high prevalence (approximately 60 percent) of violence among adolescents before the age of 18, a finding corroborated by United Nations Population Fund. In higher education, Mejuini and Obilade (2012) found that 23 percent of university students had experienced SRGBV, but Iliyasu et al. (2011) found a much higher prevalence—58.8 percent. Cases often go unreported or underreported because students fear victimization, punishment, or ridicule.

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