It Is a Crime to Be a Girl by Chioma Rosemary Onyekaba

Abuja, Nigeria

In a country where silence is too often praised as virtue and endurance is mistaken for strength, Chioma Rosemary Onyekaba has written a piece that refuses to bow. Her essay, It Is a Crime to Be a Girl, is not simply commentary. It is confrontation. It is grief sharpened into language. It is a demand for moral clarity in a society that has normalized looking away.

At the heart of the essay is a painful truth. Girls are too often harmed not by strangers, but by men whose titles promised protection. Fathers. Uncles. Stepfathers. Pastors. Husbands. Lecturers. Neighbours. The very architecture of trust becomes the machinery of betrayal. Onyekaba does not soften this reality. She names it.

What elevates the work beyond outrage is its unflinching examination of complicity. The essay questions the culture that elevates marital preservation above a child’s safety. It interrogates the homes where “protect your marriage at all cost” is treated as sacred instruction, even when protection means silence in the face of violence. It asks what it means when mothers and aunties choose what they call peace over justice, and reputation over rescue.

The full article reads:

It is a Crime to be a Girl

Just like Ochanya’s story, countless girls have been defiled by the very men who vowed to protect them. Uncles, fathers, stepfathers, pastors, neighbours, husbands, lecturers and all other titles they bear. And sometimes, mothers and aunties would turn a blind eye, choosing what they term “peace” over “justice”.

This is not new.
This is Nigeria; a place where a woman’s silence is called “wisdom” and “strength” and her pain is called exaggeration.

A lot of people in this nation were raised in homes where “protect your marriage at all cost” is a commandment higher than “thou shalt not kill.”

And so, an auntie watched her niece suffer, raped by her own husband and son, and said nothing?

Because society taught her that saving her marriage is more important than saving a child.

If this isn’t madness dressed in culture, then what is?

Every day, we teach our girls to shrink, to smile through trauma, to forgive the unforgivable, and to die quietly so the family name can live loudly.
We ask them to protect the image of monsters while bleeding inside.

And when they finally speak, we call them bitter. We call them broken.

But we forget they were broken by the silence we glorified.

I often ask, who is this “society” that silences women?
It’s every person who says, “Don’t talk about it.”
It’s every friend who whispers, “Let it go, you’ll heal.”
It’s every pastor who says, “Pray about it.”
It’s every mother who says, “Don’t disgrace us.”
It’s every commentor who says, “Don’t disgrace us.”

And so evil multiplies; unchallenged, uninterrupted, undisturbed.

Tell me, how long will we keep burying our daughters alive? How long will we call oppression “tradition” and cowardice “patience”?

How long will we blame a child for being born female?

In this country, to be born with a hole is to be born into war. You become a battlefield of other people’s lusts, opinions, and control.

Everyone wants to own your body, silence your voice, and rewrite your story.

But today, let it be known
The girls are not quiet anymore.
We are done apologizing for surviving. We are done calling predators “husband”, “father”, “uncle”, “friend”, or “family!”
We are done protecting rapists in the name of respect.

Ochanya deserved better.
Orah deserved better.
Every nameless, silenced girl deserved better.

If this society will not protect its daughters, then we, the daughters, will protect each other. Because the time for silence has expired. The time for justice has come.

Let it burn where it must.
Let it break what it must.
But let truth finally breathe.

In its cadence and courage, the essay transcends activism and enters the realm of literature. It does not rely on spectacle. It relies on moral urgency. It confronts a nation with its own reflection and asks whether culture can continue to outrank conscience.

At a time when conversations about gender based violence demand more than ceremonial sympathy, It Is a Crime to Be a Girl stands as both indictment and declaration. It is a reminder that silence is not wisdom. That endurance is not virtue when it shields harm. That protecting girls is not rebellion. It is responsibility.

And in refusing to whisper, the essay ensures that truth, at last, is heard.