HealBridge works with women and children leaving domestic abuse in Nigeria. Safe shelter, counselling, legal help, and a route back to work.
People assume Nigerian law is one thing. For domestic abuse it is not, and the difference is not academic — it decides what you can ask a court for, which court you go to, and how quickly anything happens. This
Read MoreThere is an assumption, held by almost everybody including many of the women it applies to, that a woman with her own money is safe. She can leave whenever she wants. Nobody can control someone who pays the rent. It
Read MoreThe Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, usually shortened to the VAPP Act, was passed in 2015. It is the single most important piece of Nigerian law for anyone experiencing domestic abuse, and it is widely misunderstood in both directions. Some
Read MoreLeaving without documents is normal. People leave at night, or during a window that lasted four minutes, and a birth certificate is not what you are thinking about. The consequence arrives about three weeks later, when everything you need to
Read MoreWhen we ask a woman what is keeping her where she is, the answer is very often her mother. Not a husband's threats, not money, not the police. Her own parents, telling her that every marriage has difficulty, that she
Read MoreA woman reports an assault. Within days there is a complaint against her: she stole from the house, she abducted the children, she is unfaithful, she is mentally unwell, she is the violent one. This happens often enough that it
Read MoreAn account only you can see is the single most useful practical thing a woman in an abusive marriage can have. It is what makes transport possible, what makes a deposit possible, and what turns leaving from a leap into
Read MoreMost advice about rebuilding assumes a job. For a great many Nigerian women a trade is the more realistic route, and sometimes the better one: it starts sooner, it fits around children, it does not require a reference for a
Read MoreA great many women describe the same surprise. They coped for years, left, reached somewhere safe, and then fell apart. That is not a relapse and it is not weakness. While you are in danger the body holds itself together
Read MoreLeaving frequently does not end the contact. It changes its form. A great many women describe more contact after separation than before, because the person who has lost control is trying to get it back, and because he now has
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HealBridge works with women and children leaving domestic abuse in Nigeria. Safe shelter, counselling, legal help, and a route back to work.
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