TheCable

With narratives of male superiority thriving, female bullying and domination of women at all cost will flourish. Violence against women in Nigeria is mostly institutionalised through negative gender stereotypes. 

According to Afri-Dev, a non-governmental organisation, close to three in 10 men of the ages 15-49 believe that a man is justified to hit his wife if she burns food, argues with him, goes out without telling him, neglects the children or refuses sexual relations.

What’s most shocking is that the statistics are higher for women who have been socialised to feel inferior, subservient. Close to four in 10 women of the ages 15-49 believe that a man is justified for the same reasons as identified as above.

Two of the ways that the media can help eliminate violence against women are by doing away with negative stereotypes and positive portrayal of girls and women in the media – especially stereotypes that justify gender-based violence. The outgoing year witnessed a number of violence agianst women.

Here are some chilling details of how husbands beat up their wives.

RONKE BEWAJI SHONDE

In May, news was agog about the death of the mother of two, Ronke Bewaji Shonde. She was killed by Lekan Shonde, her husband.

H said he did not kill her. He said he was angry because Ronke had refused him sex in three months so he just “just pushed her hand way” and she fell on the stairs to her death.

But Shonde’s neighbours had said the couple’s marriage had been violence-filled, with Lekan often beating up his wife.

The violence eventually culminated in the death of Ronke, mother of two children, who were left beside her already-bloated body before their nanny and other neighbours found the corpse.

THE MAN WHO SLASHED THE VEIN ON HIS WIFE’S NECK

This woman had five children who she solely catered to since her husband had no means to. According to the woman’s sister, Vero, who lived with the couple, the man had been really violent towards his wife who refused to leave because of the children.

“They used to quarrel a lot. The husband was always beating her. We severally told her to leave the house for him but she declined, preferring to endure for the sake of her children.  It was her resolve to endure that eventually caused her, her life. She gave birth to five children for him,” Vero had told The Nation.

On this fateful night, Vero said the curtains finally fell for her sister after the husband slashed her neck, leaving her in a pool of her own blood. Worse, leaving the children without a mother to provide their needs.

“I saw that the husband had used a knife to slash her neck,” she said. “He cut the vein that holds the neck and the head. She was in a pool of her own blood.”

THE ZENITH BANK MANAGER WHO BROKE HIS WIFE’S LEG

John Edobor, a manager of one of the Zenith bank branches in Lagos, battered Ivie, his wife, alongside some hired touts. He hit her legs with a metal rod repeatedly and broke the bones.

Ivie currently faces the possibility of losing her right leg. She is now fighting to get justice. Ivie said her husband abandoned her after her business failed and because she did not have a male child.

Narrating the incident, Ivie said she was in front of her house when she saw some touts with her husband.

Ivie legs were repeatedly hit with the iron rod until her bones fractured.

“He tried to hit me on the head with a metal bar, but I shielded myself. I landed on the floor with my legs extended where he proceeded to hit me on the legs continuously with the metal,” she told SaharaReporters.

“The injury was so severe that my broken bone tore through my skin puncturing an artery in the process. Almost three months and two surgeries later, I have titanium plates and screws to keep my leg in place, and I am unable to use my right leg,” she said.

John was sacked from his job, a move gender equality advocates described as a step in the direction of showing that gender-based violence is unacceptable.

THE MAN WHO BRUTALISED HIS WIFE’S NIECE FOR USING THE AIR CONDITIONER

Rasak Alabi was so upset that Latifat Adeyemi, his wife’s niece, had an AC in her room.

His wife, a nurse in the US, had asked her niece to stay in the house she built to take care of her mother. This apparently angered the man who had been estranged from his wife for 20 years before a reconciliation that saw him move into his wife’s house.

He broke into the room, pulled out the AC because he said it consumed to much power. When the girl called her uncle to report the matter, he hit her with a spanner on her face and proceeded to flogging her with a cable.

“As I turned around, he hit me in the eye severally with a spanner and as I ran off, he picked a cable piece and flogged me,” Latifat told the Punch.

Alabi ran away after the incident.