One woman killed every 49 hours by intimate partner – Rights activist

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A women’s rights activist, founder and Executive Director of DOHS Care Foundation, Mrs Ololade Ajayi, shares her thoughts with BIODUN BUSARI on the disturbing rise in femicide, the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender

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How does your advocacy track femicide cases in the country?

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We have a Femicide Observatory, which is an app that crawls the internet searching for gender-related killings of women and girls in Nigeria. So, we receive alerts through that.

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We also get alerts from social media, the mainstream media, and communities, especially rural communities where these cases occur.

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Through this Femicide Observatory, we tracked over 42 cases in just the first four months of the year, from January to April. In May, we tracked 12 more cases, bringing the total to 54 cases in 2026 alone.

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In 2023, we tracked 197 gender-related femicide cases. In 2024, we tracked about 133 cases involving the deaths of 150 women and girls who were killed because of gender-related motives.

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How many femicide cases from your tracker have received justice?

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Very few. Out of the cases we tracked in 2024, the only two I can say received swift justice were those of Hauwa Alli and Salome Adaidu.

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That was largely because one case went through a court-martial. Hauwa Alli was killed by Adamu Mohammed, a sergeant in the Nigerian Army in Borno State, and the perpetrator was sentenced to death.

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Also, Salome Adaidu’s killer, Timileyin Ajayi, was tried in Nasarawa State under the Penal Code and was also sentenced to death.

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But in most of the cases we tracked, justice is nowhere in sight.

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Justice usually takes a very long time. It is often a traumatic process for victims’ families, who are repeatedly re-traumatised. I hope the process becomes much faster.

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What patterns have you observed in these femicide cases in terms of the victims, perpetrators and locations where they occurred?

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Our data show that the home is the most dangerous place for a Nigerian woman. From our femicide tracker, the highest number of cases occurred in the home and were perpetrated by husbands, boyfriends, or other intimate partners.

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Another recurring pattern is that women are killed for rejecting sexual advances. This also happens mostly in the home rather than elsewhere.

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For instance, at the School of Nursing in Imo State, about four weeks ago, a female student was raped and killed for rejecting a man’s sexual advances.

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There was also the case of a woman who ended a relationship two years earlier. Her former boyfriend tracked her down, disguised himself as a deliveryman, and killed her in her home.

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It is deeply disturbing that the place where women and girls should feel safest has become one of the most dangerous places for them in Nigeria. It should not be so.

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Another pattern we have identified is substance abuse-related femicide. The impact of drug abuse is not limited to users alone. Women and girls who are relatives, acquaintances, or spouses of substance abusers also become victims.

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For instance, in several parts of the country, women and girls have been killed by their own sons who abuse drugs.

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Why do you think femicide cases should be treated differently, even when they arise from disputes or relationship issues?

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Those who describe these cases as domestic violence may not necessarily be wrong. But we must identify the motive behind the crime. You cannot simply label it domestic violence and stop there. You cannot simply describe it as a crime of passion and leave it at that. Often, such terminology ends up justifying femicide.

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When people say domestic violence resulted in femicide and you ask why, you begin to hear allegations of infidelity. Even if there were allegations of infidelity, does that give anyone the right to take the law into their own hands and kill a woman?

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What happened to divorce? In many cases, these allegations are even unfounded. Before anyone can establish the truth, the woman is already dead.

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It is only when we call something by its proper name that we can begin to understand the motive behind it.

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Do you think calling it femicide is the right solution to curbing it?

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Yes, it is one of the solutions.

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By calling it what it is, we can better understand the motives, the methods used, and the associated risk factors.

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For example, we identify something called non-fatal strangulation. Where domestic violence involves non-fatal strangulation, there is a high likelihood that the woman may eventually become a victim of femicide.

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Similarly, where a weapon is present during domestic violence or where there are incidents involving flammable materials, the woman is at significant risk.

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So, we have to call these killings what they are to attract the attention needed to end this menace.

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The reason it should be called femicide is that the term homicide lumps together very different categories of killings.

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For example, an armed robber who kills someone is grouped together with a man who has subjected his partner to years of domestic violence before eventually killing her.

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The Nigerian state has not formally recognised this distinction, but that does not change the reality. In the first half of 2025 alone, we tracked 88 cases. From that data, we found that in Nigeria, a woman or girl is killed every 49 hours.

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Why do you think there should be femicide prevention and accountability laws?

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First, such laws would help identify the root cause of the problem, which is misogyny.

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The level of impunity with which these killings are committed is alarming. Women are killed for rejecting sexual advances or marriage proposals.

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Women are killed simply because they are women. They are killed because they are perceived as the inferior gender. They are killed for flimsy reasons by intimate partners, relatives, or close acquaintances. There has to be accountability.

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Without legislation that specifically addresses femicide, these murders will continue.

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If you check our Femicide Observatory dashboard on our website, you will see that the cases keep rising. March, in particular, records a spike almost every year.

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If proper research is conducted, we may discover that femicide increases in March because of the aftermath of Valentine’s Day. We have not carried out that research yet, but there is a strong possibility that some women who rejected sexual advances on Valentine’s Day later became victims in March.

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Femicide also affects the country’s economy because women who are doctors, lawyers, nurses and other professionals contribute significantly to national development, yet many are being killed in their productive years.

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That alone is sufficient reason for the government to enact legislation specifically addressing femicide.

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How do you think the establishment of femicide response units would differ from the existing law enforcement system?

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Creating dedicated femicide response units would ensure that police officers are specially trained to identify and respond to the risk factors associated with femicide.

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If a woman reports domestic violence, these officers would recognise that she may be at risk of becoming a femicide victim and act swiftly to prevent it.

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When someone pours hot oil on his wife or smashes a bottle on her head, that goes beyond ordinary domestic violence; it suggests an intention to kill.

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There should therefore be specialised response units capable of intervening before such cases escalate into actual femicide.

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Can you further explain why misogyny is a root cause of femicide?

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Misogyny is essentially prejudice against women.

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In Nigeria, beyond discrimination and gender inequality, there is a long-standing cultural bias against women.

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There is hardly any state in Nigeria where misogyny does not exist.

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We also have systemic inequality. Many social amenities and opportunities that are available to men remain inaccessible to women and girls.

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Take political participation, for example. Women remain significantly underrepresented in politics. The imbalance is obvious in the National Assembly.

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We also have a large number of out-of-school girls, which reflects these broader inequalities.

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Many of our traditional, cultural and religious practices discriminate against women and girls.

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There are communities where women and girls are not allowed to leave their homes during certain traditional festivals. We witnessed an incident in Delta State about two months ago where women and girls who went outside were sexually assaulted.

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To this day, I am not aware of any convictions or serious prosecution of those responsible.

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When perpetrators continue to get away with such crimes, impunity flourishes, and the crimes continue.

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The states with the highest number of femicide cases are Lagos, Delta, Ogun and Edo. In the North, the Federal Capital Territory records the highest number of cases, followed by Kaduna.

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How would you rate the government in terms of intervention in reducing femicide cases?

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I hope I won’t be arrested for my rating because the Nigerian government’s intervention in femicide cases has been very poor. There are significant gaps in the state’s response to these cases.

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We’ve had cases of femicide where women and girls reported abuse before they were eventually killed, yet there was no serious intervention.

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There was the case of Lucy in Enugu State, who was killed by a man believed to be her uncle or father. We learnt that two days before he killed her, she had gone to the police station to report him and ran away.

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But he tracked her down and brought her back. She went to the police station again, and the uncle still went there, took her back, and later followed her to a pharmacy, where he struck her with a heavy object.

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Imagine if the response had been that she was taken away from that community, given proper shelter, and the man prosecuted. That would have been a life saved.

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In some states right now, I think we have about 52 sexual assault referral centres and some shelters. That means there are only 52 sexual assault referral centres and shelters serving over 200 million people.

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That’s abysmal! So, you can see that there are not enough protection mechanisms for women and girls, and there are not enough response mechanisms either.

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There are cases where the family of a man who killed his wife uses the children to subvert justice by telling them that since their mother had died, their father would go to prison and nobody would take care of them.

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Meanwhile, if it were codified into law that once a homicide occurs, especially between intimate partners, the state assumes responsibility for the child, including appointing a legal guardian to make them feel safe, things would be different. But we don’t get to see any of this in Nigeria.

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Another issue is that, with these cases occurring every 49 hours, how many of them actually make it to court? The protection mechanisms against failed prosecution are weak.

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You mentioned that the children of victims are used to subvert justice. How about the adults in some victims’ families who willingly don’t come forward to seek justice?

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It is because femicide is regarded as a private issue. They become hostile witnesses. Nigerian society regards it as something that happens to a woman, whereas it should be seen as part of a broader systemic failure. Femicide is a crime; it is a criminal offence.

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It is not a private matter. It should be regarded as a public health issue. If it were treated as a public health issue, it would be taken beyond the control or consent of family members.

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In fact, we want to make femicide a political issue. We should be asking legislators, governors, and other politicians, whenever they come to campaign, what they intend to do about the worsening killings of women in our communities.

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Like the question you asked, we should ask how they plan to enact laws that will make femicide a public health issue and address the problem of hostile witnesses. Domestic violence is not just a family affair. This is because the woman who is killed does not just belong to one person; she has a family and contributes to society.

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When the government recognises that those who kill women and girls are taking away people who contribute to the economy, and punishes the perpetrators accordingly, everyone will sit up. Even men should take part in protecting women from being killed.

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Are you saying this is one of the reasons victims don’t get justice?

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It is part of the systemic failure. The first problem is that there is no specific legislation. The second is that many families eventually become exhausted by the process. It is very traumatic for many victims’ families.

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Imagine going to court for three years over a case. Some cannot afford legal aid. Others cannot afford transportation to court. When a case keeps being adjourned repeatedly, they become discouraged.

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There was a case in court where the perpetrator realised that the victim’s family was indigent and offered them N20m to withdraw the case. But the family refused the offer and stood their ground until justice was served.

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Sometimes, victims’ families need therapy because there is a huge gap in mental health support. Some families simply do not want to keep reliving the trauma as they pursue justice.

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Nobody cares for them as they go through the process, and all these factors fuel femicide. That is why we are calling on the government to fast-track the process of securing justice for victims of femicide.

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We have seen examples of countries with femicide laws where cases have declined, especially when the laws are properly implemented. There are countries with femicide fatality review systems, and these have helped address the problem. The government should emulate such models.

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In what ways have you engaged public office holders in the fight against femicide?

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I remember reading a statement by the Senate Leader, who said they are in office to address Nigerians’ problems. He said Nigerians do not bring their problems to them.

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So, we no longer keep quiet. We have submitted a bill on this issue. We also formed a partnership with the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies to help us engage lawmakers and ensure that this issue is brought before them.

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We have also partnered with the Gender Technical Unit within the National Assembly. We have written letters to senators and members of the House of Representatives representing the hotspot states.

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The hotspot states are those with a high prevalence of femicide, including Lagos, Delta, the FCT, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Kano, Rivers, Abia, and Edo. We have also written to the Ministries of Women Affairs and to female legislators, informing them that this is an issue confronting the country.

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