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Indicator
This page was last updated on 20th April 2024
Meets Criteria:
Yes
Partly
No
No evidence
N/A
Multiple jurisdictions
Nigeria, a federation comprising 36 states, has multiple legislative frameworks for sexual offences. The 17 southern states are governed by the provisions of the Criminal Code Act 1990 (CCA). The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) is governed by the Violence against Persons Prohibition Act 2015 (VAPPA). The Penal Code 1960 (PC) governs the 19 northern states. This reviews assessed these three areas separately. The Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act 2013 (SSMPA), a federal law that applies nationally, contains an offence that criminalises any public display ‘of same-sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly’. The Child Rights Act 2003 (CRA), which has been adopted by 23 ofNigeria’s 36 states, contains the single child sexual assault offence of ‘unlawful sexual intercourse with a child’. The Evidence Act 1990 contains the rules of evidence relevant for sexual offences in all parts of the country. Although individual states have the power to enact their own criminal law and some have done so, including the twelve states that practice sharia law, they are not included in this review.
Despite some positive reforms in the CRA and the VAPPA, Nigeria’s sexual offences laws do not meet many of the good practice indicators. Sexual offences in the CC and the PC are not gender-neutral. There are some specific child sexual assault offences in the CCA, the PC and the CRA, but they are not comprehensive. Nigeria does not provide close-in-age exceptions or defences in any legislation. Close-in-age defences are necessary to avoid criminalising young people and children who engage in consensual sexual activity with their peers. The CCA criminalises sexual intercourse with a woman who has an intellectual disability, using the derogatory terms ‘imbecile’ and ‘idiot’ to describe her. The age of consent to opposite-sex sexual activity is 16 under the CC and the PC, and 18 under the CRA.
Unlike the CCA and PC, in the Federal Capital Territory the VAPPA has an expansive definition of rape to include all forms of non-consensual sexual penetration – by penis, objects and other body parts – of all orifices. Rape is limited in the CCA and PC to penile penetration of the vagina.
Consensual same-sex sexual activity is a crime throughout Nigeria. These offences should be repealed. All non-consensual sexual acts, including anal ‘rape’, should be included in the general sexual assault provisions, such as ‘rape’ and ‘sexual assault’, as well as in child sexual offences. All of these crimes should be gender-neutral.
Nigeria is a state party to relevant international and regional human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Convention on the Rights of the Child, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is also a party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol).
Read more about the criminalisation of LGBT people in Nigeria.
The full assessment of Nigeria is available here.
This report examines the status of sexual offences legislation in Commonwealth Africa, assessing good practice and identifying where there are gaps in protection, with a particular focus on women, children, LGBT+ people and people with disability.
This report lays out criteria for good practice human rights compliant laws across four areas of sexual offences legislation, namely rape/sexual assault, age of consent for sexual conduct, treatment of consensual same-sex sexual activity between adults, and sexual offences in relation to people with disability.
Since 2015, the Trust's legislative reform programme has been analysing the need for the reform of sexual offence laws and delivering technical assistance to support such reform. Find out more about our Changing Laws, Changing Lives programme.
