Evaluating the effectiveness of the violence against persons prohibition act in reducing female genital mutilation/cutting in Nigeria: a multi-year policy impact analysis

TL;DR

This study examines how a Nigerian law against violence has affected the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting over time.

Contribution

The paper provides a multi-year analysis of FGM/C prevalence in Nigeria before and after the VAPP Act's enactment.

Findings

Awareness of FGM/C remained high, while prevalence among mothers and daughters declined.

FGM/C prevalence is lowest in the northeast and has steadily declined in the southwest.

Significant regional differences in FGM/C awareness and prevalence were observed.

Abstract

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a harmful practice that is performed in various parts of the world, especially in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Although the Federal Government of Nigeria signed the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act into law in 2015, little is known about the extent to which the law has contributed to reducing the practice of FGM/C in Nigeria. Therefore, this paper seeks to compare the prevalence of FGM/C before and after the enactment of legislation prohibiting it in Nigeria using data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) of 2007, 2011, 2016/2017, and 2021 (individual recode file), which collected data from women aged 15–49 years across the 36 states of Nigeria, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The study findings showed that awareness of FGM/C was high across the four (4) rounds of MICS survey datasets, while the prevalence of mothers and their daughters being circumcised has declined. The prevalence of FGM/C practice is lowest in the northeastern region and has been declining steadily in the southwestern region. FGM/C practices are still relatively high in the southeast, southwest, north-central, and northwest, respectively. The findings indicate statistically significant differences in awareness and prevalence of FGM/C before and after the enactment of the VAPP Act, with heterogeneous patterns across geopolitical regions. While these trends are consistent with a potential policy effect, the results should be interpreted as associative rather than causal.