Introduction
Gender-based violence (GBV) is a long-standing system of oppression that affects people all over the world. It is particularly common in developing countries, with Nigeria ranking among the countries with the highest rates of gender-based violence. The Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey of 2013 reported that 28 per cent of women aged 15 to 49 had experienced physical or sexual violence, and 11 per cent had suffered physical violence in the year before the survey.
Five years later, the DHS 2018 survey found that the figure had risen to 31 per cent, and that nearly half of married women in the South-South had suffered domestic abuse. Similarly, a national study made by UNICEF found that 24.8 per cent of female respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 had been sexually abused before reaching the legal age of 18, while 10.8 per cent of male respondents had the same experience.
Among the frequently reported types of gender-based violence in Nigeria are harmful customs such as female genital mutilation (FGM); unpleasant widowhood ceremonies, child marriage; forced marriage; physical assault; sexual abuse including rape, harassment, incest, and defilement; trafficking in women and girls for prostitution and/or forced labour; economic violence; and emotional and psychological violence.
A careful examination of the Nigerian Penal Code and Criminal Code Act reveals that the law, as it is, knew nothing of the many ways violence is lived and experienced in the daily realities of the common man. Marital rape was no offence; assault was reduced to a narrow physical act; rape was restricted to an offence that could only be committed by a man and experienced by a woman; and harmful practices were left untouched by the law’s lack of legal protective measures.
The consequence of these legal loopholes was a legal framework that carried the form of law without its substance. It was against this background that the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act of 2015 was enacted. The Act marked a deliberate shift in recognising and adopting novel approaches to providing an improved legal framework that criminalised what had long been considered normal practice, and outlawed what custom had allowed over the years.
However, it is observed that despite the introduction of the VAPP Act 2015, its promise of reform has proved greater than its performance as the Act remains a federal law of limited reach dependent on state adoption through domestication, and where it has been adopted, enforcement is weak. Hence, the defects of the law as it is (i.e. lex lata), which the VAPP Act sought to address were not wholly cured but merely displaced.
This essay examines the VAPP Act from three interrelated vantage points. The first is its substantive provisions, which represent a deliberate departure from the restrictive framework of earlier criminal laws by codifying a comprehensive catalogue of offences that expanded the definition of violence beyond physical assault to encompass novel forms of gender-based violence such as emotional, psychological, and economic abuse.
The second vantage point is the pattern of state-level adoption, which is a process shaped by Nigeria’s federal structure and the varying political, cultural, and institutional contexts across its thirty-six states, producing an uneven legal landscape in which the Act’s protections remain hampered by territorial jurisdictional limitations.
The third vantage point is the effectiveness of Nigeria’s broader response to gender-based violence, which is assessed through indicators such as rising levels of public awareness, persistent cultural and social stigma, and significant enforcement gaps that hinder victims’ access to justice. Taken together, these perspectives allow the essay to situate the VAPP Act within the larger struggle against gender-based violence in Nigeria.
The essay makes use of case studies, prosecution records, and scholarly analysis to argue that the VAPP Act’s potential remains unrealised without systemic reform. The essay therefore contends that bridging the gap between the law’s normative promise and the reality of implementation requires harmonised enforcement mechanisms, institutional strengthening, and a commitment to Nigeria’s obligations under regional and international human rights law.
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