Championing gender justice courageously in rural Nigeria, By Priscilla Ikos Usiobaifo

The BHI team is addressing harmful cultural and religious beliefs and practices that fuel sexual violations of girls and women in rural communities, while offering better alternatives to culture and interfaith leaders and influencers. I am leading my organisation to facilitate peer review mechanisms on what has worked in addressing social norms by engaging with experts across the country.

As we wrap up activities commemorating the Women’s Month, I am reflecting on my gender justice journey in Nigeria. About a year ago, I was awarded the Woman of Courage by the US Mission in Nigeria. The award was in recognition of my unwavering contribution to reforming laws and dismantling sociocultural norms perpetuating sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the country. During the award ceremony, I reaffirmed my commitment to championing the rights of girls and women in rural areas and amplifying the voices of rural activists. This award from the US Embassy amplified my work at BHI, as it provided me with tangible media visibility, both locally and internationally. It boosted my agency and drive for community-based programming in an era where most of my colleagues are focused on urban cities.

In the past year, I increased consultations with community gatekeepers, interfaith leaders, and NGO colleagues in my advocacy for transformative approaches that drive broader systemic changes in gender justice. As a feminist leader in a rural NGO, I recognise the importance of engaging with a diverse group of partners and working more intentionally with cultural and interfaith leaders in designing programmes that ultimately influence the lives of girls and women in grassroots areas.

As I reflect on the award presented by the US Mission in Nigeria and its implications for my work at BHI, it is crucial to examine the leadership capacities of women, particularly young women leaders in rural communities who are actively mobilising for social change. The voices of rural women, who are not only beneficiaries but also supporters of our work, have consistently aligned with the BraveHeart Initiative’s advocacy for more accountable leadership and governance in Nigeria. These women highlight the importance of feminist leadership, particularly in promoting the economic empowerment of women, as a means of addressing the unequal power relations and power imbalances that perpetuate violations of women’s rights. The successes recorded so far by my team at BHI are attributed to the mobilisation of women at the grassroots, whom we constituted as a community of practice for gender justice.

I am fortunate to be leading the BHI team to implement a SGBV Prevention Project funded by the Ford Foundation, which addresses the sociocultural biases that foster gender inequalities and the legal limitations to fighting against sexual and gender-based violence in rural communities of Edo State. The BHI team identified the structural and systemic discrimination faced by women that places them at greater risk of gender-based violence, and we are facilitating more dialogues, reflections, and value clarification activities with community influencers, interfaith leaders, and state actors, to interrogate these social norms and attitudes.

We are breaking the silence and facilitating difficult conversations around social norms, harmful practices, and misogynistic behaviours toward girls and women in our communities. While we support and promote harmless cultural and religious practices, we fiercely condemn and courageously mobilise against harmful practices.

My team is building knowledge and deepening understanding of culture and interfaith leaders on the overarching effects of violence against women, as we advocate for adaptation to suit current realities and newer trends in gender justice. As a catalyst for change who is positively disrupting the status quo and challenging existing trends, I have resiliently navigated the patriarchal structure of our project communities. The BHI team is addressing harmful cultural and religious beliefs and practices that fuel sexual violations of girls and women in rural communities, while offering better alternatives to culture and interfaith leaders and influencers. I am leading my organisation to facilitate peer review mechanisms on what has worked in addressing social norms by engaging with experts across the country. I recently shared some of our SGBV prevention approaches at a Ford Foundation-organised side event at the UNCSW69 in New York.

Earlier this month, in commemoration of IWD 2025, I was give an award by the Edo State Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development in recognition of my efforts in girl-child and women empowerment in Edo State. As a young feminist leader in a profoundly patriarchal society, I am intentionally providing clarity on our organisational values and feminist identity. BraveHeart Initiative for Youth and Women adopts a systems approach to addressing SGBV in rural communities by transforming the criminal justice system through data-driven interventions, policy implementation, social norm shifts, and structured feedback loops.

Over the past year, I have worked passionately to strengthen community communication systems for behavioural change and am addressing socio-cultural norms and practices that significantly contribute to the SGBV epidemic in Edo State and across our country. I am currently increasing advocacy efforts to address gaps in our SGBV legal frameworks, as I understand that policy reforms are integral in driving change in the behaviour and attitudes of the citizenry. While we address social norms at the individual and community levels, my team is also strategically focusing on institutional reforms that challenge the structural and systemic frameworks within the diverse institutions we engage with, to prevent SGBV in rural communities. I am leading my team to expand our SGBV prevention work in rural secondary schools to address School Based Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment (SEAH). We view this as an institutional change in social norms, achieved by engaging school management to reflect on their practices and policies regarding SGBV Prevention.

At BHI, I utilise data to inform policy and advance gender equality; therefore, I led my team in developing an SGBV Dashboard, which the Open Society Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation funded. The BHI SGBV dashboard is a central reporting and data visualisation platform for real-time tracking of sexual and gender-based violence cases, in which the organisation intervenes. Drawing lessons from our SGBV Dashboard, we have begun to use data to design interventions that are online-oriented and explicitly tailored to addressing online sexual predators. We are intentionally addressing a critical cross-cutting issue, which is the prevalence of technology-facilitated sexual violence in rural areas. Through this Dashboard, we are leveraging technology for SGBV prevention and response.

I was recently at the MacArthur Foundation Office in Chicago, where I shared outcomes of our SGBV Social Justice Project in Nigeria. Through the project, we strengthened the criminal justice system in rural communities of Edo State, Nigeria. Criminal justice reforms, especially in rural and underserved communities, is central to promoting gender justice. We increased access to SGBV services by vulnerable girls and poor women; improved case tracking and documentation of SGBV cases; and developed a predictive model for sexual assault programming. We are currently facilitating court prosecution in 47 SGBV cases at the Auchi High Court, Edo State, Nigeria.

The Edo State Government has made a commendable effort by enacting the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Law (VAPPL) and establishing a GBV coordination mechanism. However, BHI is working with other partners to ensure effective implementation of the law, as well as the design of approaches to prevent more girls and women from becoming victims of serial perpetrators. By aligning legal frameworks with grassroots realities and incentivising enforcement, BHI is ensuring a survivor-centered, responsive, and functional justice system that dismantles barriers to accountability.

Priscilla Ikos Usiobaifo is executive director of BraveHeart Initiative for Youth and Women, Igarra, Edo State.