An Assessment of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Nigeria

Abstract

The world was greeted with the official declaration of the Novel Coronavirus (SARS?CoV?2) Disease, also known as COVID?19 pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020.It was bad luck that the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, has put the world on public health alert and no country was spared of the effects of the pandemic. However, Sexual and Gender-based violence occurs in all around the world, within the households or in the larger community and these impact women and girl on unequal basis. Consequently, as Nigeria struggle over COVID-19 pandemic, new fact show sudden increase in sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), especially against women and girls. The purpose of this research study, therefore, is to identify and discuss the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on sexual and gender based violence in Nigeria. Feminist theory was adopted .This research work relied on both primary and secondary sources of data for both qualitative and quantitative analysis. In addition to the viewpoint of the authors, this paper undertook a review of the related literature regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and sexual and gender based violence. The review reveals that sexual and gender-based violence has been noted as a major international human rights abused and public health issue. Meanwhile, there has been a fairly Covid-19 pandemic focused reporting on the impacts of the crisis and limited research specific on sexual and gender based violence. More so, there is relatively poor data access about its frequency for cross-sectional analysis to learn women’s and girls’ experiences and perception of sexual and gender-based violence. The types and levels of sexual and gender- based violence that occurred were examined to determine critical implicating factors resulting in different types of sexual and gender-based violence. This paper has recommended some measures to be adopted by Nigerians and the Nigerian government in order to curtailing sexual and gender based violence against women and girls in the country with the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and similar pandemics in future.