As the world celebrates the month hosting the International Women’s Day, Ogoni women, victims of torture in the hands of the Nigerian military 1993-95, during the days of agitation against the atrocities of Shell in their land, retold their stories of torture including rape and unimaginable humiliation that still wracks their lives.
This was part of events marking the 2025 International Women’s Day in Port Harcourt, Monday March 10, 2025, tagged, “2025 International Women’s Day: Feminists Convergence and Trauma Healing Session.”
At the trauma healing session, the women cutting across varied ages, narrated their harrowing experiences sending deep feelings down the hall.
The women recounted how the Ogoni crisis cost them their husbands, children and property and left many raped and some maimed for believing in the Ogoni cause. In particular, members of the Federation of Ogoni Women Association, FOWA, the women arm of the struggle and the first face to the public, described how they were prey to constant harassment, destruction of their market and farm wares and even humiliations in the guise of being stripped naked and forced to sit under the sun or in extreme cases, rape.
Even children then, now adults, still suffer from the harrowing experience of the Ogoni dark days. They still have replayed in their psyche, the kicks, the raids that forced them to stay away from school, run into the bush with their frightened parents and facing hunger.
during the crisis period
Participants at the event heard of how the crisis destroyed relationships because of the strong enmity that erupted between pro-Ogoni activists and pro-Government groups resulting in brothers going against their brothers.
“My aunty lost her life and that of her only child to trauma from the Ogoni struggle. Because of the division of vultures and non-vultures, her two brothers could not come together to sit on the same table to receive a suitor and negotiate a bride price for the lady.
“After waiting for about three, four years without a headway, the young man found another woman and married her. That disappointment broke my cousin, a trained teacher. She became lost and a later attempt to aid her recovery saw us encourage her to pick up a new life by joining those being sent to Canada brought even more calamity.
“In the camp in Benin Republic where the Ogoni youths were prepared for the travel, they were paired and while this lady was struggling to get herself back to a relationship, on the eve of the departure of a ready set, lo and behold, her former fiancé stepped out with his wife. That was a sight too painful for this lady to accept. It so broke her spirit that they had to bring her back to Rivers State. She ended in the hospital and never recovered.
“The agony of watching her only child suffer and die because of the crisis also caused my aunty to follow. The trauma is still with us.
“I am telling the story to show how many Ogoni daughters suffered as a result of the struggle. I am asking for justice for my aunty and her daughter. Today, the lineage is gone,” the relative, a retired nurse narrated in tears.
According to her, the most painful part of the sad story is that today, the brothers who could not see eye to eye then are now sitting on the same table to receive suitors and giving out their daughters in marriage.
Another woman in her late 60s and FOWA activist recounted how the soldiers tracked her from the village to her Port Harcourt residence lamenting, “Three of my houses in Port Harcourt were destroyed for being a Ken Sarowiwa supporter.”
Midnight raids, sudden attacks and blockades, the women recounted, were the order of the day as safety was not assured, and anything on the path of the rampaging soldiers – livestock, goods, farm produce were looted including assaults on women.
“Dem no care for age or whether you marry,” an elder woman stated. She narrated that women suffered undue harassment in the hands of soldiers – women were stripped naked for being POWA members, raped women were stigmatized, those unfortunate to get pregnant had their children disowned,” she recounted.
Another captured the Ogoni women experience thus:
They kill all our women and take all our things
They rape our women
They do all the bad things and take our oil.
She lamented that the above lyric which she heard in the dream before the Ogoni/FG face-off eventually became a reality and expressed fear that oil resumption will usher in another round of conflict, abuses and end to the little progress in the area of environmental restoration from the cessation of oil extraction in their land.
The women asked how after suffering from so much violations and losses, the Nigerian government, without addressing the crimes against the people wants to resume oil production. The women also asked the federal government to honour the Ogoni request for resource dividend in the form of ascribing a day’s production (Dekor) for Ogonis as enshrined in the Ogoni Bill of Rights.
While reviewing the Beijing +30 Report of Rivers State women collated from an earlier meeting, Kebetkache Board prefect, Chief Bridget Osakwe disclosed that though there have been some progress, the voices of Rivers women continues to remain unheard with political leadership standing at barely six percent while budget allocated to the ministry of Women Affairs which, should champion women’s causes stands at 0.05 percent.
The report, she further disclosed, states that there is an alarming steady rise in incidence of gender and sexual rights abuses with a staggering 7,435 cases being reported in 2023 alone. The women further identified poor education, poverty and environmental degradation as major factors limiting women from advancement.
Dr Osakwe urged women to begin to identify spaces in community governance and begin to engage leadership from those ends to increase the voices of women in public leadership as she charged women to stand up for women.
