Hush Women! The complex disabled woman in Nigeria’s legal and human rights framework

1.1 Clarification of the terminology: ‘Disabled’ woman in Nigeria

Insight from Mercier1 demonstrates how ‘disability’ does not necessarily have to involve functional limitation(s) at all but could stem purely from harmful societal attitudes, prejudice and stereotypes. This understanding coincides with the historical but relevant meaning of ‘disability’ that relates to having limited and truncated human rights.2 Specifically, this insight is also consistent with an emergent disability3 that would not necessarily have happened but for some form of oppression and the result of social oppression in Nigeria. Specifically, I use Nigeria’s patriarchal legal discourse as a case study to demonstrate that the Mercier definition of ‘disability’ persists, mainly when the disabled body is female.4 This understanding is unlike Nigeria’s legal framework's definition of the ‘disabled’ woman as 'born and essentialist’ that arguably can be potentially faulty. The use of a disabled woman as opposed to women with disabilities and the specific focus on Nigeria’s legal framework as a case study thus becomes evident.

The above understanding is consistent with Wasserman’s two aspects of disability. The first aspect is the social marker or stigma,5 and the second aspect is physical deficiency.6 He advocates for the integration of the two elements.7 This twofold argument brings to the fore the idea that the ‘disabled’ woman, whether because of impairment or difference or combination of both, has limited or curtailed legal protections in Nigeria’s legal framework today. Yet, the object of legal and human rights framework should be to protect the oppressed and most stigmatised individuals of society, including how ‘disabling habits of thoughts and social practices’ function.8

There is a well-documented reality of women as victims of sexist oppression and its severity in Nigeria .9 One in three women in Nigeria, for instance, has reportedly encountered sexist oppression at some point in their lives.10 These women are often injured, disabled, and, in extreme situations, murdered as a result of the severity of this oppression. One can speculate that the gravity of sexist oppression experienced by women in Nigeria has led to continued debate and the questioning of their humanity.11 These sexist oppressions occur with impunity despite existing legal and human rights framework with commitments ostensibly to ensure the protection and promotion of the rights of (disabled) women in Nigeria. A threefold dysfunctional legal relationship confirms the oppression of the woman in Nigeria. The first aspect is the relationship between law and culture. According to Williams, women are primarily defined by their cultural roles as wives and mothers in Nigeria. Therefore, the problem begins when it becomes challenging to determine where law starts, and culture ends, or vice versa.12 The second aspect is the relationship between the law and the patriarchal Nigerian society that sees women as inferior.13 The third aspect is the pluralistic relationship and nature of the law that reinforces confusion and uncertainty, particularly with regards to women's human rights protection.14

From the above, a correlation between the forms of oppression that women in Nigeria experience and the dysfunctional legal relationships is clear. A significant question to ask would therefore be whether law and specifically human rights, can adequately respond and speak to disabled women’s experiences and lived realities. By asking this question, I draw attention to the idea that few studies have paid enough attention to the relationship that exists between law and the oppression that women face, mainly when this oppression manifests as sexism and disability discrimination simultaneously in Nigeria. Engagements have mostly focused on the oppression that manifests as sexism and disability discrimination as separate issues.

Yet, reality shows that many women in Nigeria have sustained injuries as a result of sexist oppression and have become disabled.15 Anecdotal and scholarly reports of, for instance, brutal acids,16 burning oil17 attacks on women is proof of how sexist oppression is disabling. This assertion is valid mainly when the sexist oppression manifests as domestic violence, female genital mutilation (FGM), harmful widowhood rites and can potentially end in physical, sexual and psychological disabilities.18 These examples demonstrate the link between sexist oppression and its disabling implications, although investigations in this regard are rare. Thus, it is possible to link sexist oppression that sometimes manifests as gender and sexual violence to severe physical and mental-health disorders, as well as physical and psychological impairments. 19

Despite the preceding revelation, the lived realities and experiences of the disabled woman have remained largely silenced and ignored because I argue, her lived experiences do not seem to fit neatly into any of the dominant feminist and disability legal and human rights narratives. On the one hand, disability narratives tend to favour men with disabilities. This situation is the result of patriarchal culture and the masculine hegemony, which bestows certain privileges on men in Nigeria in general. On the other hand, given the existence of the socially constructed institutions and cultures that are already prejudicial towards women, the feminist narrative in Nigeria is geared towards focusing on non-disabled women in general, without focusing specifically on or with little regard for the issues facing disabled women.

The law and specifically the liberal human rights framework as literature find establishes neat categories.20 With such categorisation, the law demands that one must choose between being a woman (identity category) and being disabled (identity category). The disabled woman is to claim rights either as a ‘woman’ or as ‘disabled’, but not as both simultaneously. Yet, the ‘disabled’ woman has trouble choosing one of these established identity categories. This trouble emerges because the ‘disabled’ woman does not necessarily fall and cannot neatly fit herself into the ‘I am a woman’ or an ‘I am a disabled person’ identity categories. Categories that law and specifically the human rights framework has neatly created, without in the process silencing herself completely. Unfortunately, because she does not neatly fit into the human rights categories, she is labelled deviant and denied protection.21 Consequently, the ‘disabled’ woman's actual lived reality and experience of oppression and discrimination remain hushed and silenced in Nigeria's liberal legal and human rights framework that defines violations of rights by treating disability and sex/gender as entirely separate categories.

2.1 The disabled woman understood from the medical-religious perspective in Nigeria’s legal framework

The concept of disability as a medical-religious problem is prevalent in Nigeria. On the one hand, as in Western cultures, disability is predominantly understood from a medical perspective in Nigeria.24 According to this dominant understanding, disability is a product of a medical diagnosis.25 It refers to body variations, impairments, bodily flaws  or failures. On the other hand, inspired by the medical understanding, it is still common in Nigeria to view disability in superstitious, cultural and religious terms.26 The explanations given for disability rely on the traditional and religious beliefs of Yoruba folktales and the Bible.27 Swain and French describe the connection between disability and impairment and sin or wrongdoing in biblical injunctions.28 The biblical injunctions related to healings and cure of sick and impaired persons confirm this point;29 reinforcing the medical-religious relationship. Perhaps, it is this relationship that Betcher aptly describes as a lay imitation of the church.30 Nigerians view disability as a fundamental flaw that is a direct consequence of perceived evil, punishment for specific misconduct and misbehaviour.31 The religious and traditional explanations ascribed to disability are not surprising considering that religion is an essential part of Nigeria's culture and Nigerians are generally extraordinarily religious and traditional.32 Consequently, underlying this twin understanding is the central premise that disability is an unfortunate consequence of biology and a personal tragic occurrence simultaneously.33

This twin understanding of disability, prevalent in Nigerian society, is reinforced in its law.34 The 1993 Nigerians with Disability Decree (NWDD), for instance, inspired mainly by the medical perspective, restricts the definition of disability to the functional condition and ability of the body.35 A ‘disabled person’, according to this 1993 Decree, is:

a person who has received a preliminary or permanent certificate of disability to have a condition which is expected to continue permanently or for a considerable length of time which can reasonably be expected to limit the person's functional ability substantially, but not limited to seeing, hearing, thinking, ambulating, climbing, descending, lifting, grasping, rising, any related function or any limitation due to weakness or significantly decreased endurance so that he cannot perform his everyday routine, living and working without significantly increased hardship and vulnerability to everyday obstacles and hazards.36

The essentialist undertones in the NWDD are evident in the foregoing definition. First, this definition exposes the medical reasoning that forms the basis of many social-welfare laws on disabled persons in Nigeria. This reasoning reinforces the archaic idea that disabled persons are the objects of welfare, health and charity, rather than the subjects of legal rights.37 Also, the fact that the Decree invokes the need for medical intervention to be certified ‘disabled’ is worrying.38 This worry is apparent, because, with such requirement, the medical understanding of disability becomes limiting in its scope, encouraging ‘biological determinism’.39 ‘Biological determinism’ according to Areheart, denotes the idea that genetics determines individual development.40 Therefore, biological determinism exposes a significant problem of essentialism.41 The problem with this kind of essentialist understanding of disability lies in its total reliance on a medical condition, without considering the role that society and culture play in disabling people.42

Apart from the 1993 NWDD, the essentialist undertones can be identified in the fact that disability is missing as a prohibited ground for discrimination in section 42 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (Nigerian Constitution).43 Literature abounds that corroborates this oversight.44 Arguably, this oversight links to the emphasis on the medical understanding of disability that focuses on biological determinism. This section also depicts a formalistic  approach to the prohibited grounds of discrimination that is particularly problematic for the disabled woman. This assertion is evident in Festus Odafe & Others v Attorney-General of the Federation & Others.45 This case involved the realisation of the rights of persons living with HIV-AIDS (PLWHA). The court had to decide whether, regarding section 42, the applicants had been discriminated against by prison workers and inmates. In reaching its decision, the court applied a narrow and restrictive interpretation. It found that the right to non-discrimination, as enshrined in section 42(1) of the Nigerian Constitution, did not cover discrimination because of illness, virus or disease.46 Consequently, the court decided that the applicants did not qualify for freedom from discrimination because health status is not a ground covered in the section. 47

Notwithstanding, scholarships have argued for a purposive interpretation of this section.48 In the spirit of purposive interpretation, some scholars have read the phrase ‘the circumstances of his birth’ in section 42(2) to include disability.49 Using the example of the involuntary sterilisation of adolescent girls with intellectual and developmental disabilities, for instance, Ofuani has argued that the sterilisation of adolescent girls based on their disability is an infringement of section 42(2).50 In other words, the author has used section 42(2)’s reference to the ‘circumstances of his birth’ to argue that the involuntary sterilisation of adolescent girls with intellectual and developmental disabilities is a discriminatory act. However, there is a different and more common understanding of this phrase. Even Durojaye and Owoeye note that this phrase is rare in the non-discrimination provisions of most constitutions in Africa.51 The phrase addresses explicitly discrimination targeted at children because of their parentage or because of conception out of wedlock.52

Even if we read disability into this phrase as suggested, which is not necessarily wrong, it represents an essentialist definition. This essentialist definition limits disability to merely a consequence of the circumstances of his birth when it is clear that one cannot limit disability in this way. Besides, the exclusionary male pronoun used in the phrase makes one doubt whether this section covers the disabled female and her intersectional reality.

2.2 The disabled woman understood from the social perspective in Nigeria’s legal framework

As a counter response to the medical-religious views would be the social approach. The investigation of the social aspects of disability is necessary for Nigeria, where this perspective is yet to be welcomed or firmly established.53 The argument that disabled women in Nigeria are ‘disabled by society’ lies at the heart of the social understanding of disability.54 Being disabled by society suggests that the oppression faced by disabled women is not merely the consequence of bodily injury, but is an outcome of a social structure that is unable to respond to differences and variations in the human body. Essentially, this social understanding is a critique of the medical-religious view that blames the disabled woman for her disability.

However, despite its wide popularity, the social understanding of disability has been heavily criticised. I discuss two main criticisms here. First, the social model overemphasises the idea that it is the society that disables, without acknowledging the complexities of disabled peoples' lives. Such an understanding of disability fails to recognise the relevance of impairment and pain in the lives of disabled women in Nigeria. It overlooks and disregards the role that impairments play in contributing to disabled women's social disadvantages. In elaborating upon this critique, Shakespeare emphasises such an understanding's deliberate effort to disregard the vital role that impairments play in the lives of disabled women, either as personal experience or as a cause of the disadvantage.55 The attempt to ignore impairment by proponents of the social understanding has been deliberate because to admit impairments is to concede that disability is solely about the body's deficiency. According to Shakespeare, the social interpretation of disability deliberately ignores pain because to confirm pain would be to endorse the argument that disability is indeed solely about physical limitations. 56

Second, the social lens to understanding disability places too much emphasis on the social context, without acknowledging the benefits of medical care and specific impairment-oriented responses. The notion that people with impairments are impaired solely by society, in Shakespeare's opinion, is not necessarily true,57 because, even while removing social barriers, the impairment may still be challenging. Shakespeare's point that attempts to eliminate social barriers should not be to the detriment of medical or clinical interventions is valid.58 It is right because a disabled woman not only experiences discrimination but is also hugely affected by the limits that are imposed on her by her impairment. Besides, critics have warned that interpretations drawn from the social understanding of disability suggest an attempted denial of the impaired bodies or minds of disabled women in a desperate attempt to seek equality with non-disabled people at all costs. This point underlies Shakespeare's observation that people are not only disabled by society alone but also by their bodies. 59

Until recently, the only specific legislation that addressed disability rights in Nigeria was the NWDD.60 Arguably, one can read the social or right-based understanding of disability in section 57(b) of the recently enacted the Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (Prohibition) Act, 2018 (Disability Act).61 Section 57(b) provides a definition for the term ‘disability’ to include: ‘long term, physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.’62 With this definition, there appears to be an acknowledgement of the role that the Nigerian society and culture play in disabling people. However, in a completely contradictory fashion, the Act reverts to defining persons with disabilities in line with the medical understanding of disability just like the 1993 NWDD quoted above.63 Like the 1993 NWDD, this 2018 Act requires a medical certificate to be certified ‘disabled’.64 With such a requirement, biological determinism is emphasised in a manner that invalidates a social and human rights definition of disability.

The drafters' intention for a contradictory twin definition of disability is not clear and explicitly stated in the 2018 Disability Act. However, what is clear, is that the Act’s position is dissimilar to the stance of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) where its drafters simply acknowledge disability as an evolving term.65 Also, the Act’s medical definition of persons with disabilities is unlike the CRPD’s social and human rights perspective.66 Nevertheless, the essentialist undertones in this 2018 Act is evident in its language. Section 1 of the 2018 Disability Act, for instance, provides that ‘a person with disability shall not be discriminated against on the ground of his disability by any person or an institution in any manner or circumstance whatsoever’.67 At face value, the use of the term ‘a person with a disability’ as it appears in the Act gives the impression of a ‘false universal’ disability experience for all disabled persons. This assumption of a false universal’ disability experience in itself is particularly problematic for the disabled woman. This problem arises because such false universal disability experience assumes that all disabled persons share similar encounters. Yet, this is not necessarily true. A ‘false universal’ disability experience does not necessarily contemplate the complexity and intersecting experiences of a disabled woman who could potentially experience discrimination on more than just her disability or sex as separate grounds but both grounds simultaneously.

Even more disturbing is the Act’s use of the male pronoun his for a twofold reason. One, as earlier indicated, just like the 1993 NWDD, the exclusionary male pronoun as used in this legislation makes one question whether the legal protections provided include the disabled woman. Two, the exclusionary male pronoun as used in this legislation, exposes how the male experience usually presented as the ‘universal’ disability experience, ignores the complex and intersectional experiences of the disabled woman in Nigeria.68

2.3 The disabled woman understood from an interactive and intersectional perspective in Nigeria’s legal framework

The previous analysis is significant as it proves that understanding disability is a complicated matter, especially in Nigeria. Yet, how societies divide bodies is vital to what it means to be human.69 So far, we have shown two characteristics of essentialism evident in the Nigerian legal framework. The first is biological determinism that rests on the medical understanding of disability. The second is a false universal disability experience that rests on both the medical and social perspectives. Although both sides disagree vehemently on how ‘disability’ is to be defined. There still appears to be consensus by proponents on each side of ‘a false universal’ disability experience. As Shakespeare has shown, the medical versus social understanding of disability debate merely shifts the attention from one extreme assumption to another equally extreme notion.70 For example, on the one hand, disability is equated with dependency, invalidity and tragedy. On the other hand, disability manifests as social oppression, social relations and social barriers. In other words, it moves the perception of disability as caused by biological or natural defects to seeing it as something that has nothing to do with individual bodies or brains.

Therefore, the problem starts where there is a dominant tragic perception of disability in law that singlehandedly attempts to explain disability. This assertion is particularly true in Nigeria where law and specifically human rights would like us to believe that disability is just a medical and religious matter. Be that as it may, the reliance on a single approach to understanding disability has encouraged essentialism.71 Essentialism, according to Grillot, assumes that there is a disabled person's encounter that can be explained individually from other characteristics that the disabled person carries and embodies.72 Her explanation describes how this essentialist understanding presupposes that a disabled person's encounter is a stable one, one with a clear and constant meaning, through time, space, and different historical, social, political, and personal contexts.73 The perceived need to define what the disabled experience is, has prompted the stripping away of identities such as sex, gender, sexuality and race with the presumption that these individual identities can be separated or fragmented

However, using the experiences of African American women, Crenshaw introduced ‘intersectionality’74 as a way to criticise the essentialist problem of antidiscrimination law including Nigeria’s law that refuses to contemplate the disabled woman’s intersectional identity. In the next section, drawing from an intersectional lens, I demonstrate, how the identity categories of womanhood and disability that a disabled woman embodies are unstable and fluid unlike the essentialist approach that law and human rights adopt,

3.1 Womanhood as a form of oppression: As an inferior identity in Nigeria

From her birth, for instance, a woman has ascribed the identity category ‘woman’ which is regarded as an inferior and oppressed identity, particularly when compared to the male identity in Nigeria. As confirmation of this argument, Izugbara notes how most Nigerian cultural and religious values are sexist,84 a result of the different and inferior values placed on a female body as opposed to one identified as male.85 In most Nigerian cultures, the female child is socialised from birth to believe that she is not only different from, but also inferior and subordinate to, the male child. 86 On the one hand, the female child learns weakness and fragility.87 Her fragility is reflected in the mothering and nurturing roles that she then acquires from the society. On the other hand, the man learns aggression and strength and to exhibit superiority over the woman. 88

Besides, scholarship has accurately equated womanhood to disability. A crucial aspect of being female, as far as Morris is concerned, is being weak and dependent, characteristics that are usually synonymous with depictions associated with the disabled.89 The differences that women supposedly exhibit are perceived as departures from the male standard and interpreted as types of disabilities.90 For example, the oppression that women suffer is usually linked to their supposed and perceived physical, intellectual, and psychological differences and abnormalities, when compared to the male norm.91 These perceived differences that women embody are usually portrayed in a disabling manner, for instance, as irrationality, hysteria, emotional and physical weakness and are automatically equated with and interpreted as inferiority and inadequacy.

Unfortunately, these kinds of (mis)interpretations reinforce the oppression that women suffer by attributing disability to them. To be labelled female or disabled suggests weakness and passivity, which are characteristics that the disabled woman unfortunately inherits.92 Thus, the inferior identity category of ‘woman’ can easily be equated with and is equivalent to the disability identity, considering that inferiority is a variant of disability and disabling.93

3.2 Womanhood as a form of oppression: As a patriarchal defined identity in Nigeria

Patriarchal notions confirm the origins of the ‘woman’ identity category as inferior and oppressed.94 The forms of oppression that women face are a direct result of the assumptions and meanings that have been ascribed to their bodies by male oppressors.95 Harmful colonial, cultural and religious practices, which accord an inferior status to women, theorists agree, worsen inferior meanings ascribed to the woman's body.96 One early description of ‘woman’, for instance, can be traced to biblical times, with the creation of woman (Eve) as the helpmeet of man (Adam).97 The (mis)interpretations that scholarship has often attributed to this biblical passage often justifies the idea that women are the weaker sex and inferior to men. Such (mis)interpretations underlie the view of women as minors or even less than human in Nigeria.98 The ‘woman’ identity category has, therefore been subject to patriarchal definitions, where men define what it is and mean to be a woman. One would therefore be right to speculate that perhaps women in Nigeria have been unable to determine their definitions of what it means to be a woman because the man's foot is frequently on her throat.99

Durojaye also confirms how the sexist or patriarchal meaning attributed to the female body reinforces the oppression that women suffer in the Nigerian society.100 This insight validates the correlation between the inferior female identity and the reality of oppression in Nigeria.101 The flawed identity ascribed to women is what arguably rationalises their unfavourable legal treatment. Evidence demonstrates how the oppressive acts meted out to female bodies, like disabled bodies, are endorsed by cultural stories and the representation of women as inferior and unruly.102 The prevalence and gravity of oppression, such as the practice of FGM in Nigeria, is a case in point. The FGM practice occurs because of representations of women's bodies as unruly and in need of sexual control. By undergoing FGM, parts that cause sexual pleasure for women are removed and ‘controlled’ in the name of preventing sexual promiscuity, ensuring docility as well as total submission to the husband.103 Unfortunately, this practice’s potential to render some women ‘asexual’ and sexually passive or inactive becomes evident. Such sexual control resulting from FGM can therefore be said to be similar to the asexuality label usually imposed on disabled women.

From the above, one would be right to assert that to be female is a source of oppression to women.104 This oppression could manifest as sexism or disability discrimination and, in most cases, as both at the same time. Gender-based oppression and violence identified globally as the primary causes of death and disability for women between the ages of 16 and 44 validate this point.105 This observation is undoubtedly correct in Nigeria, where exhaustive documentation reveals the severity of gender-based exploitation that women suffer just because they are women.106

Underlying the argument that to have a ‘woman’ identity category in Nigeria is to be oppressed is the notion that one is not necessarily born a woman, but one becomes a woman. This point is similar to DeBeauvoir's remark that one is not born but instead becomes, a woman.107 She suggests that it is not necessarily physical characteristics that make one male (able-bodied) or female (disabled). In other words, it is societal constructions that ascribe to one an identity of femaleness or maleness, where the former signifies weakness and by extension disability, and the latter represents strength and by extension ability. By implication, although an individual is born with female biological characteristics, becoming a woman is a socially constructed identity category.

Some feminist scholars have invoked the idea that the identity category of woman is problematic.108 This problem stems from the sexist and patriarchal meaning that the woman identity acquires, already discussed above. However, other feminists argue that it is not necessarily the meaning that society attributes to women's bodily roles that oppress women but the functions themselves.109 They believe that the biological coalesces into the social, not because society imposes a meaning on a woman's body, but because the woman's body determines her social being. While this is a valid position, women's oppression is a reality, whether it is the meaning that society attributes to women's bodily roles or the roles themselves in Nigeria. In other words, the argument is that woman's sex or gender does not matter; what counts is the oppression.

Butler sums up the womanhood problem by explaining how the assumption that the concept of womanhood is a representation of a shared identity is troublesome.110 She explains that rather than being a stable concept, to be a woman is a site of trouble and oppression, even for those that the concept purportedly exists to protect.111 This oppression and trouble stem from the fact that an individual is not only a woman; her identity is non-exhaustive because gender intersects with other identities. If this is so, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to separate gender from the political and cultural intersections that invariably shape and sustain gender.112 What the previous analysis and feminists' disagreements show is how, unlike what Nigeria's legal and human rights framework would like us to believe, the identity category of womanhood is complex, unstable and disabling.

4.1 Disability as a form of gendered oppression: Its definitions

Having acknowledged these objections, I proceed to reveal disability as a form of gendered oppression in Nigeria; I interrogate three aspects of disability, namely, its definition, its origins and its tendencies. First, the meaning of the term ‘disability’ is contentious. This contention is apparent because even the CRPD does not explicitly define disability.115 The progressive nature of the term is however acknowledged. To state that disability is a form of oppression on women in the first instance is reinforced by Kayess and French's understanding of disability as oppression by social structures and practices.116 Their insight demonstrates disability as the oppression that works by denying or diminishing the individual's personhood, citizenship and civic participation.117 This reasoning confirms the diminishing of the personhood of women as a reality in Nigeria. Evidence points to how womens' humanity is questioned, based on the gravity of the oppression meted out to them in Nigeria.118 This questioning of the humanity of women in Nigeria is, in my opinion, equal to what Quinn has identified a civil death’.119 This civil death phrase indicates the denial or loss of an individual's personhood. It is, in my opinion, as applicable to the woman as it is to disabled persons in Nigeria today. The gravity and prevalence of the oppression that women suffer daily in Nigeria is evidence enough.

Additionally, to have a ‘disability’ means having fewer, truncated and limited rights. This argument is in line with literature describing how historically, the usage of ‘disability’ justifies discrimination against, and the unequal treatment of groups considered as different.120 This usage persists in Nigeria's legal narrative, where women are yet to attain full citizenship. The second-class citizenship commonly ascribed to women in Nigeria clearly illustrates this point.121 Such denial of women’s citizenship validates women’s disability in Nigeria, especially if it is true that disability is the direct opposite of citizenship.122 Equality and freedom determine the extent of one's autonomy and depend mostly on having a legal personality and citizenship status.123 Therefore, where women lack legal personhood as do the disabled, the liberal vision of equality is untenable. This point is valid because a large part of achieving equality is heavily reliant on legal personhood.124 It completely validates the argument that to be a woman is ‘disabling’ and that disability is a form of gendered oppression.125 In making this point, I would use Grillot’s disclaimer: saying that forms of gender and disability oppression are related does not necessarily mean that they are the same.126

Nevertheless, the above usage and definition of ‘disability’ run contrary to the common understanding that persists today. Today, disability means having a form of physical, sensory, or cognitive impairment. Silvers describes how individuals in these very different conditions and with varying forms of injury are known and labelled as the ‘disabled’.127 However, this understanding in itself is insightful in exposing how labelling persons with physical, sensory and cognitive impairments as ‘disabled’ introduces the notion that these groups of individuals, just like women are disqualified from protection by the law in Nigeria.128

4.2 Disability as a form of gendered oppression: Its origins

Second, offering the claim that disability is a form of gendered oppression in Nigeria stirs up the contentious ‘culture versus nature’ arguments about the origins of disability. On the one hand, from the ‘culture’ perspective, disability, especially with regards to women, is viewed as a by-product of societal and cultural oppression. This position is consistent with the arguments of scholars such as Garland-Thomson, Wendell and Begum, who describe disability as merely a product of cultural diagnosis.129 Wendell's accurate reminder emphasises disability as a narrative depicting the social and cultural oppression of the female body.130 This body, according to Garland-Thomson, is portrayed as sick, flawed, crazy, ugly, abnormal, mad and maimed.131

In my view, this perspective is applicable in Nigeria, where there is significant evidence of how not conforming to accepted socio-cultural standards devalues and disadvantages the female body in such a way that it is automatically equated with or becomes a disabled body. Evidence shows that failure to conform to harmful cultural practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) is potentially disabling.132 The FGM practice, for instance, involves the partial or complete mutilation of the woman’s external genitalia meant for sexual enjoyment. This practice’s tendency to reduce or limit women’s ability to enjoy sex could result in permanent disability for women primarily because of the use of unsterile instruments amidst unsanitary circumstances.133 Thus, scholarship linking the FGM practice to psychological impairment134 as well as sexual disability135 in Nigeria is accurate.

Further, authors' analyses and depictions of widows' experiences in Nigeria could be useful here.136 In their descriptions of the horrors and oppression that widows encounter, scholars illustrate how most Nigerian cultural and religious values are sexist and oppressive to women. In making their arguments, these scholars importantly also expose the disabling oppressive nature of most Nigerian cultural and religious values, although hardly investigated as such. Iwobi rightly describes widowhood as a form of ‘social death’ in Nigeria.137 According to him, widowhood strips women of their social status, and they experience severe oppression and stigma.138

Following the same logic, if widowhood is a form of social death for women, this validates my argument that widowhood can also be a form of socio-cultural disability. This argument is valid, especially when one considers the dehumanising, oppressive practices and the resultant disabilities that a Nigerian widow suffers upon the death of her spouse. This dehumanisation of widows reinforces the idea and is proof that disability is a form of oppression experienced only by women in Nigeria. As indicated earlier, the woman gains value in most Nigerian cultures when she can perform the functions of a wife and mother. What this means is that upon the death of her husband, the widow is no longer able to fulfil her socially sanctioned wifely functions, she becomes ‘disabled’. Her position is even worse if she has no male children. The woman is, therefore ascribed the disability status and stripped off her womanhood because of her inability to perform her social functions.

The loss of womanhood a widow endures is arguably similar to the loss experienced by the disabled woman. The widow's loss is because of the death of a spouse while a disabled woman, because of disability bears a similar loss. If as established above, the general social status accorded to women in Nigeria is one of inferiority and subordination, then it would be accurate to conclude that the public perception in patriarchal Nigeria is that being a woman is disabling. This deduction is correct, especially if we consider the arguments that rightfully regard inferiority and subordination as variations of disability. Disability, especially regarding women, is therefore not merely a question of medical health, genetics and sympathy, but instead a question of politics, power and the lack thereof in Nigeria.

On the other hand, the dominant premise of the ‘nature’ argument is the view that disability is the result of natural events. This argument suggests that disability is a product of medical diagnosis, and one is disabled because of a specific medical diagnosis. Proponents of the ‘nature’ argument might, therefore, vehemently disagree with such blunt and bold assertions that women in Nigeria are disabled. These assertions may offend particular feminist sensitivities and may appear to make light of the pain that is associated with a disability.

Interestingly, the dominant disability narrative in Nigeria is the nature argument. Abang, using the example of blindness, identifies five leading causes of this disability in Nigeria:139 infections, cataracts, glaucoma, malnutrition and trauma.140 His line of argument is also consistent with Smith's description of how preventable diseases, congenital malformations, birth-related incidents, physical injury and psychological dysfunction produce disability.141 Undoubtedly, the definition of disability here is, in many respects, a medical one.

Even if I follow the dominant nature approach to disability, at least three of Abang’s leading causes of blindness, namely, malnutrition, trauma and infection, could also have their roots in cultural and unequal power explanations. It is, therefore misleading to limit the causes of blindness to genetics and medical factors. One might not necessarily be born malnourished, but malnourishment could be a result of several socio-cultural factors, including poverty and war. Also, domestic violence and rape could result in trauma triggering blindness. What is striking about this argument and supported by the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) is the social origins and constructions of disability.142

4.3 Disability as a form of gendered oppression: Its tendencies

Third, disability as gendered reflects women's increased susceptibility to diseases and their disabling effects; evident in Nigeria. Smith has alluded to how poor maternal and neonatal care has played a considerable role in increasing the number of disabilities in women and infants in the country.143 Child marriages prevalent in Northern Nigeria encourages early childbearing and is a significant cause of poor maternal care that could quickly develop into severe disabilities or death.144 It is unsurprising that compared to other countries, Nigeria tops the rates of poor maternal care, meaning that according to Onyemelukwe, women are five times more likely to develop disabilities and in extreme cases, die.145 While there are no available statistics on the actual numbers of women who develop disabilities as a result of poor maternal care in Nigeria, De Silva de Alwist describes how hormonal changes following childbirth coupled with other factors trigger women's risk of depression.146 This assertion is consistent with anecdotal evidence on the depression crisis in Nigeria.147 Thus, women's increased risk of acquiring a disability when performing their functions as a wife and mother is evident.148 Once disabled, the heightened vulnerability of women to increased discrimination and oppression amplifies the risk. Fine and Asch confirm the point by describing the increased exposure of women with disabilities to more significant harm,149 not only because they are women but also because they are disabled.150 Significant accounts describing the severe exploitation that disabled women experience as a result of their sex and their disability is enough evidence.151

At this juncture, I ask the question: What precipitates the increased susceptibility of women to disability? Literature is unanimous in linking poor healthcare to disability. Evidence shows how inadequate hygiene and health facilities in Nigeria cause infections that may result in disabilities. It is, therefore, valid to argue that preventing most disabilities could be through measures taken against malnutrition, environmental pollution, poor hygiene, inadequate prenatal and postnatal care, water-borne diseases and accidents of all types.152 Besides, studies describe how psycho-social conditions such as depression are more noticeable in women than men.153As earlier stated, De Silva de Alwist description of how hormonal changes following childbirth trigger women's risk of depression is evidence enough.154

Similarly, poverty links to disability in Nigeria.155 Smith describes the relationship and interactions that exist between poverty and disability and shows how poor people become disabled simply because of issues such as poor nutrition and a dirty environment.156 Disabilities may develop simply because poor people cannot afford to treat chronic diseases. In other words, poverty makes a person more susceptible to a disability, which in turn, reinforces and worsens poverty. Thus, the well-documented correlation between disability as both a cause and a consequence of poverty is, therefore, undeniable. This situation worsens because poor people are more likely to endure human rights violations and are less likely to enjoy the guarantee of their rights in Nigeria.157

If there is at least some truth in this well-established correlation, then the susceptibility of women to disability becomes even more evident. This correlation is valid mainly because poverty is gendered in Africa.158 Thus, women in Nigeria are more likely to experience poverty which automatically increases their susceptibility to the oppression that quickly manifests as a disability. The ultimate result is that women's exposure to poverty disables and oppresses them, making them undeserving of human rights protection. Today in Nigeria, more than ever, we witness the feminisation of poverty,159 because of the country's recent unfortunate rise as the poverty (disability) capital of the world.160 Consequently, if it is possible to speak of the feminisation of poverty, then a feminisation of disability is to be expected in Nigeria. By this, I mean that women in Nigeria are more likely than men to develop disabilities because they are the least likely to have access to food, education and healthcare, the lack of which increases their vulnerability to disability.

Importantly, from a gender-based violence perspective, women are most likely to become disabled because of their vulnerability to sexist and gender-based violence in Nigeria's patriarchal society. Socio-economic oppression, unequal incomes, disproportionate caregiving responsibilities, domestic and sexual violence all increase women's susceptibility to disability and once disabled, amplifies the harm. Although disability in this regard is usually defined using the dominant nature and medical narrative, such linkages expose the social and cultural construction as well as the gendered and emergent nature of the disability.

From the above discussions, we can make a threefold conclusion. One, that given the correlation between poor healthcare, poverty and gender-based violence, on the one hand, and disability, on the other hand, as the literature has correctly established, disability is undeniably a form of oppression of women. Two, the essentialist assumption that there is a ‘false universal’ disability experience that rests on biological determinism is limiting. Three, the ‘woman as disabled’ argument counters this essentialist argument pointing instead to an intersectional open-ended idea that disability is not about a woman having functional limitations alone (as crucial as that is). Still, this paper has demonstrated that ‘disability’ should include restrictions that are a consequence of patriarchal stereotypes, prejudices and attitudes as shown in the Nigerian situation. This assertion is valid considering the potential of harmful patriarchal stereotypes, prejudices and attitudes to turn a typical ‘non-disabled’ woman today to a potentially ‘disabled’ woman tomorrow. Viewed in this way, the interactions that exist between sexism and disability (discrimination) becomes significant.