In February 2025, Senator Natasha Uduaghan-Akpoti, one of the four female senators in the Nigerian Senate, faced an intense social media backlash not just from her Senatorial District but also from citizens alike, with the sole reason being her accusation of the sitting Senate President of Nigeria, Senator Godwin Akpabio of sexual harassment. Instead of support, she was insulted and cyberbullied for months nonstop.
A year later, in March 2026, strands of videos popped up on the social media platform X(Twitter) of a certain “raping festival” in Ozoro town of Delta state. Women caught walking on the streets that day were randomly grappled by some men, who did not only strip them half naked but also sexually assaulted them in public while others made videos of these extremely vile acts and posted them across social media platforms.
What do these two events have in common? From the elites to the masses, gender-based violence against women has transcended beyond the streets into our screens. Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence (TFGBV) has become an increasing bane in the existence of Nigerian women.
Despite manifesting in diverse forms within the Nigerian populace, there is an absence of a sole policy that addresses TFGBV in the country. This absence, despite various triggering events, manifests how policy absence has failed women in digital spaces, and its failure to protect them from all forms of TFGBV targeted at them at all levels.
Evidently, the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, enacted in 2015, with the goal to prohibit all forms of violence against persons and ensure utmost protection of survivors and punishment of perpetrators was an impressive step in the right direction. However, the gray area is still in its widespread implementation and enforcement.
Slightly similar to a TFGBV policy is the Cybercrimes Act, with only three sections of the law addressing cases of child pornography, cyberstalking, and cyberbullying, but it does not address specific gender related online violence like the spread of non-consensual intimate images (NCIIs), doxxing (revealing identifying personal information of an individual online), and deepfakes (altering of a person’s image or video saying or doing what they did not).
Records from Digital Reportal, a portal that provides reports on global digital trends, show an internet usage of 45.5% in Nigeria, with 109 million internet users at the end of 2025 and 47.8 million social media user identities as of October 2025, representing 20% of the population. This impressive development also signals a steady increase in TFGBV cases in Nigeria.
Despite limited data on other forms of TFGBV on Nigeria women due to limited reporting owing to stigmatization and inaction, recent insights from the Nigerian Ministry of Women Affairs mentioning how 45% of Nigerian women have experienced cyberstalking shows how concerning and saddening TFGBV has become.
Due to the stigma related to GBV at large and TFGBV, victims usually opt to keep these cases to themselves. Beyond stigma, the near absence of structured legal channels to address it also puts them at risk, even if they report it. Similarly, the absence of ascribing these offenses to the perpetrators and employing “name-shaming” leads the perpetrators to believe they won’t be held accountable despite committing these offenses on several occasions.
Moreover, TFGBV has been viewed largely through the lens of “social media drama” because it primarily occurs on social media platforms. It has been seen as “Twitter or Instagram drama” which people can log out of since it will be covered by another trending topic the next day. The frivolity in handling this pressing issue will cause more harm to the victims than the support they need.
The first step towards a sole policy focused on TFGBV is to recognize it as a problem that needs the government’s attention. This is where problem brokers, who provide structure and form to the problem, come into play. Coordinators of NGOs and civil society should continually campaign for the recognition of TFGBV as an inherent problem requiring policymakers’ attention.
After recognition, policy entrepreneurs should leverage windows of opportunity, which would draw massive attention to the issue from the public glare. Also, if a new administration emerges after the 2027 election inclined to issues pertaining to women and vulnerable populations, then it is a perfect time to introduce it to their agenda and push for it to be signed into a policy, although this requires ministers that would champion it.
Beyond the policy enforcing the identification of perpetrators of these offenses and imposing appropriate punishments aligned with the weight of their offenses, it should also mandate the establishment of functioning legal reporting channels for victims from the ground up; channels that are discrete and efficient enough to make them feel safe to report without being dismissed.
Importantly, it should also make provisions for adequate funding to NGOs and civil societies in the GBV space to create more avenues for women to feel safe; from providing pro bono legal support to psychological support through therapy sessions to aid their healing journey from TFGBV.
It should also address more regulations on digital privacy on social media platforms. From content moderation laws focused on ensuring they have efficient reporting mechanisms to fully address instances of TFGBV, like NCIIs, child pornography, deepfakes, among others, while mandating that these posts are taken down within 24 hours of reporting.
Since online violence spills into the street and vice versa, the policy should address proper reorientation of security agencies and government ministries already handling GBV cases on ways to handle TFGBV cases.
On a final note, TFGBV should not be shoved aside because it is a glaring issue with massive consequences like psychological trauma, resignation from jobs, physical hurt, and even death. From the masses to the elites, it’s a cankerworm rapidly eating deep into our society, and it should not be taken with levity, because at the end, online violence is still violence, and digital abuse is still abuse!
Victoria Akinro sent this opinion piece from the University of Oklahoma, USA.
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