Nigerian Couple Cry Out Over Threats To Forcibly Circumcise Their Daughters

A couple based in Warri, have cried out over alleged attempts by members of their family to forcibly mutilate the genitals of their daughters.

The husband Value Onehireba Ewansubhor, a former banker, and his wife, Ese Joy, a lawyer via a joint statement, alleged they were being pressurized by people to circumcise their 10-year-old and 7-year old twin daughters.

According to the couple, they decided on letting the public know hoping this would stop those allegedly pressurizing them to stop.

The couple in an interview with Vanguard said;

Since early 2017, some members of my wife’s family have been pressurizing us to release to them our three daughters, to have them circumcised.

I have done everything possible with my wife to get them to drop the idea but to no avail. They are bent on mutilating the girls’ genitals, insisting that it is the historical practice by which their people preserve their ladies, curtail their sexual arousal and keep them in check.

With their insistent and a threat recently to ensure that the three girls are circumcised, whether we like it or not, we are appealing to government and the general public to prevail on these people, some of whom are members of my wife’s family in Uvwie LGA of Delta State, to leave the three children alone as we do not want them circumcised.

Although we realize that this is an age-long standing tradition of large-scale practice in Urhobo land, we are by virtue of our religion and education not willing to make our children to go through the experience and insist that it is a tradition that should be put behind us in this age and times.

The wife added;

We don’t know what to do anymore, we are forced to cry to the public as they have now resorted to threatening us, vowing that once it’s time to have the children circumcised, they know how to go about it to ensure that it is done. We are scared and afraid that our daughters’ lives are under there