A great deal of writing about abuse assumes two people in a house. For many Nigerian women that is not the arrangement, and the person making life unbearable is not always the person she married.
Before anything else: in-laws being involved in a marriage is normal. His mother having opinions is normal. Being corrected by an older woman in the family is normal, and so is being expected to defer. None of that is what this article is about, and a service that treated ordinary family involvement as abuse would deserve to be ignored.
The markers are the same as everywhere else on this site. Force, one-sidedness, and fear.
What it looks like when it has gone past normal
- Your movements are decided by somebody other than you, and permission has to be asked of a person who is not your husband.
- Your money, or money you earned, is handed over to somebody else in the family and you have to account for what you spent.
- You are made to work in a way nobody else in the compound is, and objecting is treated as disrespect rather than as a request.
- Your food, your sleep or your medical care is controlled or withheld.
- Your phone is taken or read by his relatives, or you are told who you may speak to.
- You are humiliated in front of others as a routine, not as a quarrel.
- Your children are used as leverage, or turned against you, or removed to another house without your agreement.
- You are blamed for not conceiving, or for the sex of your children, and threatened with a second wife or with being sent away.
- Somebody threatens you with what will happen if you tell your husband, and you believe them.
The test is not whether an older relative told you what to do. It is whether you are afraid, whether it runs one way only, and whether refusing has consequences you cannot absorb.
Why it is harder to name than anything else
Three reasons, and all three are real rather than imagined.
The first is that the language does not exist. There is a word for what a husband does. There is no comfortable word for what a mother-in-law does, and describing it out loud tends to produce the response that every wife has trouble with her husband’s family.
The second is that the people involved are owed respect, and in many cases you owe them real gratitude as well. That makes objecting feel like a character failure rather than a boundary.
The third is that there is often no single incident. It is an accumulation, which is the same problem coercive control presents, and an accumulation is very hard to describe to somebody who was not there. You end up listing small things and hearing yourself sound unreasonable.
Where the husband stands
This is the part that decides how bad the situation actually is, and there are broadly three positions.
He is using them. He does not have to do anything himself if his mother and sisters do it for him. This is common, it is deliberate, and it gives him the ability to say honestly that he has never raised a hand to you. If his relatives escalate whenever you displease him, and calm down when he is satisfied, they are being directed even if nobody has said so aloud.
He is absent. He knows, he does not like it, and he will not intervene because the cost to him is a fight with his own family. In practice this is not very different from the first for you, though it feels different, and women stay a long time waiting for a man in this position to change.
He is caught in it too. Occasionally he is also being controlled, financially or otherwise, and is in a genuinely difficult spot. This one can improve, but only if the two of you can talk without it being reported back the same evening.
Working out honestly which of the three you have is the most useful thing you can do, because they lead to different plans.
Fertility, sons, and the second wife
Enormous pressure lands on women here, and it is worth saying plainly what is medically true. Whether a couple conceives depends on both of them, and the sex of a child is determined by the father’s contribution, not the mother’s. A woman being blamed for either is being blamed for something that is not hers.
Threats to replace you, to bring in another wife, or to send you back to your own family are a form of control whether or not anybody intends to carry them out. If you are living in a household where that threat is used, how these households work when there is more than one wife may be relevant to you as well.
Money and labour
Where your earnings go to somebody else in the family, or where your business capital is repeatedly absorbed by household demands, that is economic abuse regardless of who is doing it. Nigerian law describes economic abuse without limiting it to a spouse.
The practical step is the same as elsewhere: an account in your own name that nobody else has access to, opened somewhere the family does not use, with statements that do not arrive at the house.
Whether the law helps
Yes, more than most people expect. The VAPP Act is written about persons rather than about husbands, so conduct by a relative is capable of being covered by it, and a protection order can name a person other than your spouse and can require them to stay away from a place.
Whether that is a good idea in your circumstances is a different question, because an order against his mother has consequences inside the family that only you can weigh. It is worth knowing that the option exists, and what applying involves is set out separately.
What actually helps
- Somewhere of your own to live, even one room, changes more than any conversation. Where that is possible it is usually the whole answer.
- Your own income and your own account. Dependence is what makes the rest of it enforceable.
- One ally inside the family. An aunt, an older brother, a senior wife. Somebody whose word carries weight in a room you are not in.
- Your own family briefed honestly. Not to fight, but so that the story does not arrive there first from the other side.
- A written record. Dates and what was said. It is for you as much as for anybody else, because this is the kind of situation where you will later doubt your own account of it.
- Your documents out of the house, held by somebody you trust. In a shared compound, nothing you own is private, and documents are what get withheld first.
If your own parents are telling you to endure it, that is its own problem and it is dealt with separately. It is the single most common reason women in this situation stay.
Talking to us
You do not need to have decided anything, and you do not need to be planning to leave. Many of the women we work with are not leaving anybody. They want somewhere to put their money, somewhere to keep documents, and one person who does not tell them that every family is like this.
Questions people ask
Is it abuse if it is only his mother, and he has never touched me?
It can be. The law is written about persons rather than about husbands, and the markers are the same: force, one-sidedness, and fear. What he does or fails to do matters, but it is not the only thing that counts.
My in-laws are involved in everything. Is that not just normal?
Involvement is normal and this is not about involvement. It is about whether you are afraid, whether it runs only one way, and whether refusing has consequences you cannot absorb.
He says he cannot go against his mother. What can I do?
Work out honestly whether he is using them, avoiding the conflict, or caught in it himself. Only the third improves without you changing your circumstances, and all three are helped by having your own income and your own account.
Can a protection order name someone other than my husband?
Yes, that is possible under the law, and an order can require a named person to stay away from a place. Whether it is wise in your family is a judgement only you can make, and worth discussing with a lawyer first.
They are blaming me for not having a son. Is that on me?
No. The sex of a child is determined by the father’s contribution. Being blamed for it is being blamed for something that was never yours.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
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