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Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as Female Genital Cutting (FGC) in Nigeria accounts for the most female genital cutting/mutilation (FGM/C) cases worldwide. The practices is customarily a family tradition that the young female of the age 0-15 would experience. It is a procedure that involves partial or completely removing the external females genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whenever for non-medical reasons.

Cultural perception
The practice is mostly carried out by traditional circumcisers, without proper knowledge of human anatomy and medicine. Despite the graveness of the issue, the practicing societies look on it as an integral part of their tradition and cultural identity.

In the communities that follow excision of female genitalia, FGM/C is associated with ethnicity, culture, prevailing social norms, and sometimes as religious obligations.

In majority of the cases it has been documented that their own family members such as parents mainly mothers, grand-parents, and grandmothers of the girls are the perpetrators of this act. Ensuring daughter’s virginity is a required task for them to arrange for her marriage, receive proper bride price, and for family honor. There is also a misconception belief that in still present in Nigeria that women believe that female circumcision increases sexual pleasure among men. Another belief is that FGM/C increases women’s fertility, ability to procreate, and child’s survival. Due to immense social pressure and fear of exclusion from the community, families conform to the tradition. In Nigeria and other societies, girls who have not gone through FGM/C are considered as unmarriageable, unclean and it is a social taboo. Girls who remain uncut may be teased or looked down upon in the society. Most times, the girls themselves desire to conform to peer as well as societal pressure out of the fear of stigmatization and rejection by their own community. They accept the practice as a necessary and normal part of life. In many communities this particular practice is upheld as a religious requirement. FGM/C is performed by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. However, it is carried out in some Muslim communities with the belief that it is demanded by Islamic faith. In reality, though, there is no documentation of this practice in the holy texts of these religions. Moreover, the historical origin of the practice asserts that it predates the advent of all major religions of the world including Islam.

Often older women become the moral gatekeepers in favor of this ritual to justify their own experience of genital cutting and they tend to see any effort to eliminate the practice as a threat to their culture.

Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls is the fifth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) but In Nigeria it faces many problems due to many different resolutions not being in line with the religious and cultural beliefs of most of the Nigerian population and thus, unworthy to be enacted as a Nigerian law.

Activism
In 2018 a event organized by UN Women, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Nigerian Mission to the UN, with other partners to help promoted of change of perceptions for the women in Africa. Highlighting themes such as human trafficking, suicide bombing, female genital mutilation/cutting and sexism and sexual harassment at the United Nations. Ms. Itua, one of the presenters of the UN showcase the importance of women taking an active role in their nations role and goes on to state, “As an African woman, I believe that my goal is to work with other women in creating awareness. Together we are stronger. Working together to be stronger to change the narrative coming out of Africa.”