”A woman who is not circumcised is a dog and in the olden days was a slave,” declares Stella Omorogie, a well-known Nigerian traditional female circumciser.
Omorogie, wielding a sharp knife and the other crude and unsterilised instruments of her trade, is the protagonist of a 90-minute documentary film entitled ”Uncut – Playing with life”.
It was produced as part of a campaign to eradicate genital mutilation in Nigeria, and recently premiered in Lagos before a shocked audience of 300 people, mainly women.
In one harrowing scene a screaming young bride is spreadeagled and pinioned by five hefty women and mutilated.
In another Omorogie is seen excising the female genitals of an eight-day-old baby, a scene which angered and revolted the audience, moving many to tears.
Omorogie has since been persuaded to give up her trade and now works in Benin City as an ice cream maker, but the 50-year-old witchdoctor shown in the film is unrepentant.
”Our own is just to cut (the genitals) and collect our money,” she stated unashamedly. ”I started the practice at the age of 12.”
Omorogie inherited her job from her grandmother, a noted witchdoctor from a royal family in the southern city of Benin, capital of Edo state and a centre for traditional witchcraft.
She explains in the film that she earned at least 550 naira (less than $5) for each circumcision and up to 1 000 naira for a wealthy client for complicated cases.
Her story is the most striking strand of a film campaigning for the eradication of a practice that doctors say causes lasting psychological trauma, extreme pain, chronic infections, bleeding, abscesses, tumours, urinary tract infections and infertility.
Female genital mutilation is a tradition and a health problem in at least 28 African countries.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) about 50% of Nigeria’s female population is mutilated.
About 15% of the cases of in Africa are of the practice’s most extreme form, known as infibulation, Amnesty International said in a 1997 report.
In this process, all or part of the external genitalia is removed by the stitching and narrowing of the vaginal opening.
Those who support the practice, especially in Benin City, say it is an antidote to sexual promiscuity among women.
But despite this local emphasis on chastity, in the past three years Benin City and Edo have been home to most of the hundreds of women deported from European countries for prostitution.
Others say circumcision is a right of passage for girls into womanhood and some witnesses in the film, including economist Muhammed Ighile, condemned opposition to it as foreign propaganda.
The mother of a circumcised baby, Patience Sanni, said that she agreed to the practice ”because of our tradition.”
In some communities it is believed that if a baby’s head touches the clitoris during childbirth either the mother or the child will die.
The film was made by the pressure group Communicating For Change (CFC), which conducted its own research into the practice.
CFC director Sandra Mbanefo Obiago told the audience she was shocked in 1995 to discover that genital mutilation was still widespread in Nigeria.
The body found that in 1999 the practice was prevalent in southern Nigeria but rare in the north of the country.
According to Funke Bogunjoko, a primary health advisor to the WHO in Nigeria, female circumcision leaves its victim with health and psychological problems from which she may never recover.
”The act is perpetrated out of ignorance. Let us break the culture of silence. It is time that such a practice be totally eradicated in Nigeria,” she said in a radio programme.
Female circumcision was banned in Edo State in November 1999 because of the risks of infection, but still continues. – AFP
