It is widely believed that one in every four Nigerian girls has been a victim of sexual violence. Of the number who reported their ugly experiences, fewer than five out of 100 received any form of support data from the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) states.
For centuries, the fear of sexual violence has pushed women to adopt different methods of protecting their daughters. In Pygba Sama, a community in Apo about 14.2km away from the Presidential Villa in Abuja, the fear of rape and sexual molestation by randy men has shaped the culture of protection for underage girls.
In order to make teenage girls look less ‘womanly’ and to prevent unwanted male attention, pregnancy and rape, women in Pygba Sama, Kpaduma II and a few other communities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) practice breast ironing, also known as breast flattening.
Why Iron the breast?
Thirty-year-old Kandie Iliya was in panic mode when she realised that her 10-year-old daughter was beginning to develop breasts. She broke up parts of a calabash into what looks like huge bra cup sizes, called Amapala in Gbagyi language. She then placed the parts of the calabash close to the fire, and when it was hot, she held her screaming daughter down and used it to meticulously massage the daughter’s breasts tissues until she was satisfied it had dissolved.
“I knew she didn’t want it, because she was crying and squirming. But what could I have done? She was too young to start having breasts. I love my daughter and did not want men to start noticing her.” She said.
Kandie is not the only one who believes in such a practice. Thirty-eight-year-old Grace Ekene, who is originally Gbagyi but married to an Igbo man, also decided to iron her daughter’s breasts after realising that the 11 years old was not only towering over her mates in the community but had began to grow breasts.
Although Grace escaped the experience when she was younger because she always ran away each time her mother tried to practice it on her, she still decided to put her daughter through the nightmare for fear of someone noticing the girl or molesting her.
She said: “I didn’t like it when I was young. I was scared of it. Whenever my mother called me for it, I would run away from home till she forgot.
“But after seeing my daughter and the way she was developing beyond her age, I decided to protect her, and I almost succeeded in ironing her breasts.
“Luckily, my friends, who had attended a community meeting on the day that I had set aside to do it, came to visit.
“When I told them what I planned on doing to my daughter that evening, they told me that they were told at the meeting that young girls whose breasts are ironed may develop cancer later in life.”
Breast ironing
According to African Health Organisation, breast ironing is the process whereby young pubescent girls’ breasts are ironed, massaged and/or pounded down through the use of hard or heated objects in order for the breasts to disappear or delay their development.
The United Nations (UN) states that Breast Ironing affects 3.8 million women around the world and has been identified as one of the five under-reported crimes relating to gender-based violence.
Investigation revealed that the unwholesome practice is carried out with the use of grinding stone, cast iron, coconut shell, calabash, hammer or spatula that has been heated for a long time over a scorching coal. It is also done by tightly wrapping the breasts with a belt or cloth.
In Pygba community, the practice of breasts ironing is as old as time. An investigation carried out by our reporter revealed that almost all the community women spoken to had experienced breast ironing at one time of their lives or the other.
Interestingly, most of them insist that their own mothers and grandmothers were also victims of the generational practice.
An investigation carried out by the Teenage Network in the aforementioned communities also revealed that one in every three adolescent girls had experienced breast ironing.
Some victims of the practice like Kandie ironed their breasts themselves when they felt their mothers were not forthcoming due to peer pressure.
Kandie said: “Growing up, I ironed my own breasts myself because I did not want to develop breasts early.
“I realised that the parents of all my friends and peers had ironed their breasts, so I didn’t even wait for my mother but did it myself.
“So you can see why I felt that I had to do it to my child.”
