Why ending cyber-GBV is a moral, political, and economic imperative
On 26 November 2025, at the national flag-off of the 2025 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence in Abuja, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, minister of women affairs, warned of a troubling surge in sextortion, digital romance scams, intimate-image threats, stalking, and harassment, violations causing “severe emotional harm and, in some cases, fatalities.” This is not an abstract policy concern. It is a rapidly expanding emergency unfolding across classrooms, offices, markets, religious spaces, and homes, spaces where digital technology has become inseparable from daily communication, learning, social identity, and economic survival. The harm is pervasive, spreading quietly through smartphones and social media platforms that now function as extensions of everyday life.
Yet Nigeria risks absorbing this crisis into its familiar cycle of temporary outrage followed by bureaucratic inaction. Despite years of warnings from NGOs, journalists, police statements, and survivor testimonies, the national response remains episodic, reactive, and largely symbolic. A critical analysis of the situation reveals how deeply digital violence strikes at Nigeria’s moral fabric, institutional resilience, and long-term development prospects, illuminating a national vulnerability that can no longer be ignored.
Digital violence raises profound questions about dignity, consent, and societal obligations. When a teenager is coerced into sharing intimate content that becomes a tool of extortion, the failure is far larger than the misuse of technology; it is a collapse of moral duty. Kant’s principle of inherent human worth is violated daily as Nigerian women and girls are reduced to objects of exploitation within digital ecosystems that reward sensationalism and protect perpetrators through anonymity.
The violence is both intimate and diffuse: a girl’s image can be stolen, altered, circulated, and weaponised within minutes. Deepfake sexual images are created from ordinary photos scraped from social media; revenge porn spreads too fast for victims to contain it; and sustained online harassment compounds trauma long after perpetrators disappear behind pseudonyms. A culture that blames victims rather than offenders enables this moral erosion. Digital harm is still treated as a personal failure rather than a crime.
Evidence from international, national and local organisations, shows a grim and increasingly sophisticated pattern, girls lured by fraudulent identities on Instagram and WhatsApp, women blackmailed in encrypted Telegram channels, and stalking enabled by location-sharing apps embedded in everyday devices. In several documented cases, digital threats escalate into physical violence, including assault, coercion, and abduction, demonstrating how online harm easily spills into real-world danger. These are not isolated events but symptoms of a system in which technology, social stigma, institutional weakness, and entrenched gender biases converge to create predictable vulnerability for women and girls.
Politically, Nigeria’s response is weakened by fragmentation and apathy. While the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act 2015, the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015, the Child Rights Act 2003, and various state-level Gender-Based Violence (GBV) prohibition laws suggest progress on paper, enforcement remains inconsistent and often symbolic. Victims are bounced between the Nigeria Police Force, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), and the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), each claiming partial jurisdiction, yet none offering coordinated protection. What should be a clear pathway to justice instead becomes a maze.
Law enforcement gaps deepen the crisis. Many officers lack training in digital evidence, while others trivialise complaints as relationship disputes or “private matters.” Meanwhile, parliamentary committees seldom hold hearings on platform accountability or online harms. Even after the Minister’s November 2025 warning, agencies best positioned to act remained largely silent, revealing a political culture that does not yet view digital safety as a governance priority.
This political inertia is reinforced by societal stigma. Victims are pressured into silence, families fear disgrace, schools blame girls for “carelessness,” and workplaces quietly distance themselves from staff whose images have been weaponised. Such responses shield the state from accountability and embolden perpetrators, turning digital violence into an individual burden rather than a public policy failure.
Worse still, digital violence increasingly overlaps with national security. Sextortion rings operate across Lagos, Accra, Dubai, and Kuala Lumpur. Proceeds fund broader criminal enterprises, fraud rings, trafficking networks, and extremist groups. Platforms like TikTok, WhatsApp, and Telegram are exploited for grooming and coercive recruitment. When the safety of women collapses in digital spaces, the broader security system absorbs the consequences.
Digital violence carries profound economic implications. Women who experience online abuse often withdraw from digital platforms, suffer productivity loss, avoid professional networking, or abandon education entirely. A single incident of sextortion can derail a career or force years of financial dependence.
This disproportionately affects schoolgirls, university students, and early-career professionals, the very groups Nigeria relies on for its future workforce. Every dropout weakens Nigeria’s human capital base. Families bear the costs of therapy, relocation, legal action, and digital cleanup. Organisations face reputational risks when staff become victims of deep fakes or coordinated smear campaigns.
At a macro level, investor confidence depends increasingly on digital safety. Global technology firms assess digital-rights and online-safety conditions before entering new markets. A Nigeria perceived as unsafe for half its population undermines its own ambitions for fintech expansion, AI adoption, and digital-economy growth. A digitally unsafe nation is an economically stagnant one.
The 2025 UNiTE theme offers a necessary moment of global visibility, but visibility alone is not victory. Real progress demands structural reforms that endure beyond annual campaigns, address institutional fragmentation, and confront the deeper cultural and political forces that allow digital violence to flourish. Nigeria must move from awareness to architecture, from campaigns to systems, by building a comprehensive national framework capable of protecting women and girls in an era where digital harm is evolving faster than the laws meant to contain it.
A central requirement is the development of a National Framework on Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TF-GBV). Such a framework would harmonise investigative protocols, establish standard operating procedures for digital evidence, define the responsibilities of agencies, and guarantee survivor protection across all 36 states. Without a unified structure, victims will continue to be shuttled between agencies that operate with partial mandates and inconsistent capacities.
Nigeria also needs a dedicated Cyber-GBV Unit within the Nigeria Police Force, equipped with digital forensic analysts, cyber investigators, psychologists, and prosecutors trained specifically in online harms. Digital crimes require specialised competencies that general commands cannot provide. A unit with exclusive jurisdiction over cyber-GBV would accelerate case handling, reduce evidence loss, and begin to rebuild public trust in law enforcement’s ability to address digital abuses.
Equally urgent is the need for mandatory platform accountability. Nigeria must require technology companies operating within its borders to establish faster content-takedown mechanisms, develop transparent reporting dashboards, and cooperate with law-enforcement requests. Algorithms that amplify harmful content should be subject to disclosure, and age-verification systems must be strengthened to protect minors. Without such obligations, digital platforms will remain safe havens for predators and extortion networks.
Schools play a critical role in prevention. A digital-rights curriculum integrated into primary, secondary, and tertiary education would teach young people about digital consent, privacy, online ethics, grooming risks, and how to report violations. The next generation must learn to navigate technology with a sense of agency and awareness, not fear and confusion.
Protection must also extend to women in rural and low-income communities. Safe digital access for rural women requires more than connectivity; it demands community-based reporting structures, digital-literacy programmes, and tools that allow women to participate online without exposing themselves to heightened vulnerability. Rural women are disproportionately targeted because they have fewer resources and weaker institutional support.
Finally, Nigeria must invest in long-term survivor reintegration. Digital violence leaves psychological, financial, and reputational scars that often outlast the incidents themselves. Survivors need sustained mental-health care, legal assistance, employment reintegration pathways, and safe relocation options when necessary. Addressing the aftermath is as important as preventing future harm.
Digital violence is not a niche “women’s issue.” It is a mirror of Nigeria’s moral complacency, political fragmentation, and economic vulnerabilities. A society where women fear digital spaces cannot call itself modern. When girls are intimidated into silence, education suffers; when women retreat online, democracy loses essential voices; and when institutions remain indifferent, rights become symbolic promises rather than lived protections. The erosion of digital safety is, in truth, an erosion of national integrity.
Minister Sulaiman-Ibrahim’s warning must not fade with the news cycle. It should ignite a national mobilisation to reclaim Nigeria’s digital spaces from predators, opportunists, criminal syndicates, and extremist networks. A nation that fails to protect women online cannot protect its future.
The moral obligation is clear. The political responsibility is urgent. The economic evidence is undeniable. Ending digital violence against women and girls is not only just, it is essential for Nigeria’s stability, democracy, and future.
John Onyeukwu, is a lawyer and public policy analyst with interdisciplinary expertise in law, governance, and institutional reform. He holds an LL.B (Hons) from Obafemi Awolowo University, an LL.M from the University of Lagos, and dual master’s degrees in Public Policy from the University of York and Central European University. He also earned a Mini-MBA. John has managed development projects on governance, public finance, civic engagement, and service delivery. He can be reached on john@apexlegal.com.ng
