Abuja Communities Suppress Breasts to Protect Girls from Rape

In a startling report, journalist Grace Obike sheds light on how communities within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja, engage in a harmful practice of breasts ironing to save their girls from rape.

Contained in the lengthy report published by the Nation Newspaper on Saturday, Pygba Sama and some other neighboring communities in Abuja have resorted to breast ironing, also known as breast flattening, as a means of safeguarding their daughters from sexual predators.

The widespread fear of sexual violence has shaped the culture of protection for underage girls in these areas, where mothers believe that suppressing their daughters’ breast development will deter unwanted male attention, pregnancy, and rape. This practice has been revealed to be widespread, not limited to a specific community.

But breast ironing is a painful and dangerous process involving massaging, pounding, or heating young pubescent girls’ breasts with hard or heated objects, belts, or cloth. It is believed that this process makes the girls appear less “womanly,” thus deterring potential predators. This process can however, make them develop cancer and other related ailing disorder.

A thirty-year-old Kandie Iliya said she was in panic mode when she discovered that her 10-year-old daughter is growing breats. She later broke 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.

Iliya 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 Ekene 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.”

The consequences of breast ironing are severe. Victims may suffer physical issues like abscesses, cysts, burns, tissue damage, infection, scarring, mastitis, and even breast cancer. Psychologically, it can lead to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the long term.

Despite its harmful effects and the legal provisions against it, breast ironing remains a largely unreported crime. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Violence Against Persons and Prohibition (VAPP) Act classify breast ironing as a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment and fines. However, there is little evidence of perpetrators being prosecuted.

In response to the issue, organizations like the Teenage Network and NAPTIP (National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons) are working to raise awareness, provide support, and curb the practice. Teenage Network’s efforts have led to a reduction in the rate of breast ironing in some communities.

While communities are slowly recognizing the dangers of breast ironing, more work is needed to eradicate this harmful practice and protect the rights and well-being of young girls in Abuja and beyond.

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Agency Report

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