Dear Nigerian Lawmaker, By ALU AZEGE — National Accord Newspaper %

Honourable sir, My neighbour Roseline was 25, vibrant and fierce, a diploma graduate hawking fabrics in the dusty Dutse market to support her aging mother and two younger brothers. Her dream? To save enough for a small tailoring shop. But dreams shatter fast when life turns cruel.

One evening, after a trusted customer turned predator, Roseline found herself pregnant from rape. Shame burned her cheeks; fear choked her nights. She confided in no one—her family too poor for scandal, her community too quick with stones. Nigeria’s abortion laws loomed like a prison sentence: no exceptions for rape, no mercy for survivors. Only death or the mother’s life justified it, and doctors turned her away, hands tied by the Criminal Code.

Desperate, she scraped together 21,500NGN from her savings and went to a Wumba “clinic”—a dim room with rusty tools and a man who called “Doctor.”

“It will be quick,” he lied.

The pain came like fire ripping through her. She bled for hours, alone, clutching her phone, whispering prayers no one heard. Infection set in fast—fever, chills, her belly swelling with poison.

By dawn, she collapsed in the market, blood pooling beneath her stall. A trader rushed her to the nearest hospital. Doctors fought for her life: emergency surgery, antibiotics, transfusions.

“Septic shock from unsafe abortion,” they whispered. She flatlined twice. Her mother arrived sobbing, clutching Roseline’s faded degree certificate, begging God to spare her only hope.

Roseline survived—barely. But she lost her womb, her savings, her shop dream. Now sterile, scarred, and haunted, she stares at the mirror, whispering, “If I had a legal choice, I wouldn’t have gambled with death.”

If this were your daughter, would you still defend a system that tells her to suffer in silence, to carry pain in secret, to risk her life because someone in power decided her body mattered less than a statute?

Would you still stand by if the person you love most was forced to choose between shame and death?

Because that is the lived reality for very many Nigerian girls and women right now.

Not in theory. Not in a far away country. In Nigeria here. In our homes, our markets, our villages, our cities. A girl is born into poverty, grows up learning sacrifice before she learns confidence, and then one day finds herself trapped by the very laws that were supposed to protect her. She is told what she cannot do, what she cannot choose, what she must endure. And if something ever goes wrong where she is raped, coerced, abandoned, or simply too poor to survive another mouth to feed — the law often offers her judgment instead of help.

If this were your daughter, would you want her future written like that?

Let us be honest, behind every number is a face.

There is the girl who dropped out of school because her parents could not afford her fees.

The young woman who wakes before sunrise to sell groundnut and returns home with barely enough to eat.

There is the mother who carries the weight of an entire household on her back while pretending she is not tired.

The teenager who was abused and now faces a pregnancy she did not choose. There is the poor woman in a rural clinic, waiting for help that may come too late.

These are not exceptions but hidden lives of millions of Nigerian women.

If this were your daughter, you would not want her to die because the clinic was too far away.
If this were your daughter, you would not want her to suffer in silence because the law made care dangerous.
If this were your daughter, you would not want her future determined by poverty, fear, and someone else’s idea of morality.

You would want her protected, you would want her heard and you would want her alive.

That is what every Nigerian woman deserves too. But do you know the rate of unsafe abortions in our country? 1

So here is the call, and it must be clear:

Reform restrictive abortion laws so women and girls facing rape, incest, severe health risks, or life-threatening hardship are not forced into unsafe and deadly choices.guttmacher 2
Expand access to reproductive healthcare and family planning, especially in rural and low-income communities where women are most likely to die waiting.guttmacher 3
Invest seriously in women’s economic empowerment, including credit, education, healthcare access, and support for women-owned businesses.womensworldbanking 4
Strengthen maternal health systems so survival is not a privilege reserved for the wealthy.guttmacher 5

These are not radical demands. They are the minimum requirements of decency in a country that says it values its people.

Finally, Honourable sir,

Before you vote, before you speak, before you hide behind tradition or politics or silence, ask yourself one last time:

If this were your daughter, would you want her future dictated by laws that deny her agency and endanger her life?

If the answer is no, then do something worthy of that answer.

Change the law.
Save the lives.
Trust women.
Protect girls.
Invest in their futures.

Because a nation that cannot protect its daughters cannot claim to love its future

References

Love Matters Naija. Fact sheet unsafe abortions in Nigeria. Love Matters
Guttmacher Institute. Reducing Unsafe Abortion in Nigeria.guttmacher
Guttmacher Institute. Abortion in Nigeria.guttmacher
World Bank Data. Female headed households (% of households with a female head) – Nigeria.genderdata.worldbank+1
UN Women Data Hub. Nigeria Country Fact Sheet. data.unwomen
Women’s World Banking. Nigeria confronts a challenging financial inclusion gender gap.womensworldbanking
Women’s World Banking. Empowering Nigeria’s Women Micro-Entrepreneurs.womensworldbanking
BusinessDay / ITFA reporting on women’s share of MSME operators in Nigeria.businessday