By Mofolorunso Adekunle Enigbokan
If you have lived in the United States of America for a period of time and you are of a certain melanin persuasion, you have been subjected, intentionally or unintentionally, to an unfair treatment; perhaps, you have found yourself in an untenable situation (condition) or two. Decent human beings of African descent remember the Rodney King merciless beating by the Los Angeles Police Department officers March 3, 1991, in the Lake View Terrace district of Los Angeles, California, USA. Descendants of Africa cannot forget the suffocation to death of already handcuffed, face-down Mr. George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA on May 25, 2025 when a White policeman, Derek Michael Chauvin, knelt down on Mr. Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds on the unyielding street surface as Mr. Floyd desperately gasped and pleaded for air. These horrendous incidents left a horrible taste in our collective mouth. We felt personally abused, we felt brutally violated. We were agitated and animated. We wanted to take some action, any action, as long as it would rectify the injustice, as long as it would result in the perpetrators being justly punished, as long as it would provide comfort and closure for the families of the victims.
The thread that runs through these abhorrent abuses consists of a predatory elite group, a parochial intelligentsia and some manipulated (subdued, subjected, subjugated) masses. When that thread visibly rears its head in our neighbourhood in America, we are all up in arms but when it happens in Africa (and we know it does), we tend to feign obliviousness to it; we are not inclined to raise some cane or, at the very least, assist the victims in exiting the precarious but painful, stressful, often inhumane situations. The complacency and conceitedness of Africans in the diaspora allow these human right abuses to fester in Africa. It’s a crying shame!
A case in point is the reprehensible, detestable, completely execrable practice of child abuse that is camouflaged as female genital mutilation (FGM) and that is euphemistically referred to as female circumcision. From the human rights perspective, it is a cruel and unusual punishment. From the Public Health perspective, it is a worthless endeavour since it bestows absolutely no health benefits upon the female child. In fact, to the contrary, it is deleterious to the health of the female child. It is a hideous assault on the dignity of African females.
The often-observed pattern of debasement, in the name of tradition, cultural beliefs or religion, that becomes entrenched in some African countries (in too many, if you ask me) is that when a female child is born, a spark is ignited. Brimful is the joy, multifaceted is the expected potential talent, endless is the hope for a successful life and unending is the parade of well-wishers and gift bearers. Merriment galore!
Prayers dance around every lip, melodious sounds hit the tympanic membrane repeatedly and laughter tumbles down the hallway like the majestic Victoria Falls on the mighty Zambezi river.
As each calendar rolls by, the child develops intellectually, psychologically and physically. This caterpillar is metamorphosizing into a beautiful, colourful butterfly, ready to spread her wings and soar. Her cognitive development is coming along as expected. She is mentally stable, emotionally poised and adaptive. Her friends and playmates are welcoming, affable and constantly complimentary. She is becoming conscious of her parents’ struggles and sacrifices being designed to render her challenges in life less burdensome than theirs. She is reposing trust and confidence in her parents, believing in their nurturing, caring and protective stance. She has nestled in the cushion of the family structure and that feels oh so comfortable. Life is good, no worries at all.
Then one day, one inglorious day, she is summoned into a room where a practitioner of FGM awaits her. The cold, emotionless, uncordial piercing gaze of the FGM practitioner worries the little girl. The ambient air becomes less dense, more rarefied, if you will. Tidal respiration becomes more tasking and spasmodic as if she were sprinting up the magnific Mount Kilimanjaro, with all 19,341 feet of its baronial stretch towards the blue sky. Her palms get clammy, her heart races and she is beginning to sweat bullets as she senses an impending calamitous event. A paralyzing fear, coupled with an earth-shattering disbelief, descends upon her when her own parents, whom she had trusted and adored unconditionally, forcefully restrain her and expose her external genitalia to the FGM practitioner. This child’s hitherto unblemished, unperturbed, sweet, innocent world is about to come crashing down, all in the name of tradition, cultural beliefs and religion!
With the twinkle of an eye and a nod, the child’s parents give the FGM practitioner the permission to commence her barbaric act. Unlike the Toxophilite who smoothly, lovingly and pridefully extracts an arrow from the quiver, the ‘traditional cutter’ ( i.e., the FGM practitioner ) clumsily and hurriedly pulls out her tools which, in many cases, are unsanitary and unsterilized, rusty knives, blades, razors, pieces of glass and/or scissors, and proceeds to unceremoniously mangle God’s pristine work of art, the pinnacle of sensuousness, the portal of procreation —-the female genitalia!
The FGM practitioner sprinkles some yam flour on the child’s clitoris to render it stiff, cuts and partially or totally removes the clitoris ( i.e., clitoridectomy ), partially or totally removes the inner folds of the vulva ( i.e., the labia minora ) as well as the outer folds of the vulva ( i.e., the labia majora ), and repositions the labia minora and/or the labia majora in order to narrow the opening of the vagina ( i.e., Infibulation ). She then pricks, scrapes, pierces, incises or cauterizes this poor child’s genital area as she
(the FGM practitioner) deems necessary.
This abominable act exerts an unimaginable emotional, physical and psychological trauma on the child. The excruciating pain causes her to bellow a deafening scream, a sonorous clangorous blare that approaches supersonic decibels. Her phalanges are tremoring and her entire tiny musculature is convulsing either in a violent reaction to the violence that is being visited upon her body or as a result of blood poisoning stemming from the repeated use of contaminated tools. Drenched in sweat, her glance at her mother asks and says it all. “Why, Mama, Why?”, she seems to be asking. “Why are you complicit in this devastating pain being inflicted upon me? Have I displeased you, Mama? Have I been disobedient or disrespectful? I promise I’ll do better`, Mama, if you’ll just make this painful procedure stop”, her tiny, weak, almost inaudible voice seems to mutter.
In her supreme agony, an ocean of tears rolls down her cheeks while simultaneously, fresh blood is oozing out of her wounds. The desperate attempt by the FGM practitioner to stem the gushing blood by firmly applying some old, dirty rags is not working. In fact, it is increasing, by several orders of magnitude, the child’s susceptibility to infections. The locally concocted analgesics and coagulants are not providing relief either. The excessive loss of blood throws the child into a hemorrhagic shock. Apparently, the FGM practitioner has inadvertently punctured a wrong artery. Consequently, the blood keeps flowing out steadily. The child is on the verge of losing consciousness. The FGM practitioner panics. Her haggard, wrinkled hands tremble uncontrollably as a sense of guilt overwhelms her. She may be losing an innocent child for no medically sound reason. She may be committing murder!
In absolute desperation, she grabs all the remaining bandages ( gauze ), stuffs them into the area of operation and applies maximum pressure. Fortunately and miraculously, this time, the bleeding ceases. The child regains full consciousness but the damage has already been done!
As a natural reaction to this unwarranted, uncouth and undesirable torture, the child’s defense mechanism kicks into gear. Her immune system is activated. The production of white blood cells escalate and the release of the chemical mediators of inflammation is augmented. Consequently, the child’s genital tissue swells, becomes inflamed and scar tissue (keloids) eventually forms.
The scars from an FGM practitioner’s blade are sometimes acute and fleeting. At other times, they are chronic and persistent. They are not only physical and physiologic, they are also psychological and mental. Long-term manifestations can include urinary retention and diminished sexual desire, sensitivity and pleasure. The brutality and inhumaneness of FGM can plunge the victim into life-long anxiety, depression, behavioral changes, infertility, difficult parturition ( baby delivery ) and yes, death. Unpleasant memories of the ignominious cut reverberate endlessly like a recurring nightmare, perhaps like a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with an attendant prolonged insomnia. The victim never forgets, the victim never heals!
According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) FGM data, more than 230 million girls and women have been subjected to this cruel procedure around the world with about 144 million of such procedures occurring in Africa. Prevalence rates exceed 90% in African countries like Somalia, Guinea, Djibouti, Egypt, Sudan and Mali. The incidence rate of FGM is about 8-73% in 0-14-year old females in Sierra Leone, Chad Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Ethiopia. In Nigeria, 2 out of every 10 girls experience FGM before they become 15 years old.
In a broad sense, the inflictions, crippling afflictions and life-altering outcomes of FGM are reminiscent of the atrocious consequences of the 1830-1850 dreadful, infamous journey in America called the ‘Trail of Tears’. In order to create lebensraum ( the Adolf Hitler terminology for “living space” ) for White settlers, the American government enacted the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which gave the legal coverage for the forced translocation of Native Indians from their fertile, naturally picturesque ancestral land in the Southeastern segment of the United States to “Indian Territory” in present day Oklahoma State. Thousands of Native Indians, especially the Cherokee Indians, perished during that forced trip and tens of thousands more shed tears of sorrow, anger, anguish and agony; hence the name ‘Trail of Tears’.
Subtly, albeit steadily and assuredly, the practice of FGM is marching millions of young African females, kicking and screaming, out of their land of comfortable, expected naturally blissful eroticism, normal heterogenous relationships, scar-free genitalia, social freedom and self-determination and thrusting them unto a journey which is fraught with unbearable pain, mental anguish, emotional liability, covert loneliness, incapacitating distress and deep-seated detestation of penal penetration. That FGM-constructed road is littered with tears of incomprehensible agony and deaths. It paves a ‘Trail of Tears’. Unfortunately, since most of FGM victims are daughters of peasants, their deaths do not garner national attention. Calpurnia, the wife of Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar”, put it best when she said, “When beggars die, there are no comets seen. Heaven themselves blaze forth the death of Princes.”
Slowly but surely, the message that FGM must be stamped out in Africa is percolating through a dense forest of misinformation and disinformation to the public’s consciousness. The practice has no medical benefit but it has devastating clinical results. Kudos to such African countries as Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Gambia for having enacted laws that are aimed at rendering FGM illegal. Owing to deep-rooted, rigid traditional beliefs, enforcing such laws has proven to be a daunting task. The uphill battle notwithstanding, the effort to eradicate FGM must be concerted, sustained, relentless and multifaceted.
Education of the populace is a crucial modality that must be employed in the battle against FGM. Through education, awareness of the short-term and the long-term destructive manifestations of FGM can be raised. Through education, mindsets can be manipulated, myths debunked. No, FGM does not ensure a female’s purity, cleanliness, modesty or chastity. It does not improve fertility, make childbirth easier, prevent promiscuity or decelerate infidelity. Through education, the masses can be made to realize that FGM is not a tradition that is dictated, mandated or buttressed by religious doctrines, teachings, rituals or customs. In fact, in churches, temples, synagogues and mosques alike, religious leaders are voicing their vehement opposition to FGM. Through education, countries can be dissuaded from medicalizing FGM. In other words, simply because Healthcare providers utilize anesthesia, antiseptics and surgical instruments in performing FGM does not make the procedure moral, ethical or desirable. FGM has absolutely no medical benefit! Through education, the masses can be acquainted with their fundamental right to the writ of habeas corpus (protection against unlawful detainment), their right to freely and publicly voice their opposition to FGM (freedom of speech) and their right to refuse subjugation or subjection to cruel and unusual punishment. If these rights do not exist in countries where FGM is practiced, then they should be enshrined in the Constitution of those countries. Through education, the masses can be empowered to reject FGM and a collective abandonment of FGM can be attained.
What does education entail in this context, you ask? Well, the sine qua non of education is information. The source of information can be innate or acquired. Acquired information has a point of origination, an intention of dissemination, a means of conveyance and a point of reception. In this noble, necessary and life-saving push for FGM eradication, truthful, hard-hitting, convincing information (and hence, education) must be disseminated ‘by any means necessary’, to paraphrase Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz), the iconic Civil Rights leader of the 1950’s-1960’s era. The pertinent and concrete anti-FGM information must be spread consistently, persistently, extensively and unapologetically, be it through visual, tactile, neural and/or auditory means. The airwaves (radios, TVs, political campaign rallies ) should be blanketed with anti-FGM information, catchy but cogent anti-FGM slogans should go viral on social media, anti-FGM flyers should be plastered on billboards and to the walls in places frequented by the populace, places such as the markets, sporting arenas, religious settings, restaurants, night clubs, gas stations, etc. No stone should be left unturned.
Thankfully, some governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are on the anti-FGM battlefield. UNICEF ( www.unicef.org.kh ), United Nations Population Fund ( www.unfpa.org ) and Lulu-Afrika ( www.luluafrika.org ) are but a few of them. However, the war against FGM in Africa cannot be won by just a few NGOs. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. The situation is dire. Our attitudinal approach should reflect what Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to as the “fierce urgency of now”! Africa should no longer dwell on the hope that a change is going to come. It is no longer fashionable to sit on the fence, it is time to mobilize, it is time to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, it is time to engineer progress against FGM. We cannot make progress without change. Change is the catalyst for transformation and FGM must be transformed to an outmoded practice now.
It is not calumniating to enunciate stout opposition to FGM and categorically refute the cultural myth that it upholds the honour of the entire family. Essentially, it is time for Africa to adopt a Caesarean level of selflessness and unwavering resolve. In Act 3, Scene 1 of the William Shakespeare’s play ‘Julius Caesar’, Artemidorus wanted Caesar to abandon everything else and just read the information that he, Artemidorus, thought was of utmost importance to Caesar’s wellbeing. Caesar replied, “What touches us ourself shall be last served.” That is selflessness at its zenith! In that same Act 3, Scene 1, Caesar described himself as being as “constant as the Northern Star.” That’s supreme steadfastness, that’s undeviating resoluteness. Those Caesarean attributes should characterize Africa’s armamentarium against FGM.
The African female genitalia is the crucible of human life on planet Earth. It represents the sacred pathway through which mankind sprang to life. It should not, and shall not, be defiled henceforth. Let’s eradicate FGM, let’s eradicate FGM now!!
• Dr. Enigbokan is a Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas.
