Conflict-related sexual violence and exploitation in Nigeria: male experiences of violation.

This thesis explores the use of sexual violence and victimisation as strategic weapons in civil conflicts in Nigeria by Boko Haram (2009-2025) and Fulani herders (2011-2025). Existing scholarship on civil conflicts in Africa and elsewhere tends to focus on the experiences of women and girls as victims and men as

perpetrators. However, the research presented here focuses instead on the victimisation of men and boys, which is a neglected area of research.

The core aim of this thesis is therefore to bridge the gap in understanding of male victimisation and their experiences of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in Nigeria. It seeks to understand the practitioner's perspective on the nature and scope of male victimisation by Boko Haram and Fulani herders. It also critically assesses how existing laws and policies in Nigeria deal with the problem of male victimisation in civil sectarian conflicts.

Using Nigeria as a case study and drawing from semi-structured interviews, this thesis focuses on the sense making cognitions of humanitarian actors/civilian helpers in a specific geographical zone - North Central Nigeria (Abuja and Makurdi) - where some of the displaced victims of the civil conflicts involving Boko Haram and Fulani herders are housed. It is particularly concerned to find out how these helpers, many driven by religious and humanitarian motives, make sense of and respond to the problem or 'taboo' of male sexual victimisation. More concretely, it examined the support and resources in place in Nigeria to help male victims of CRSV. Guided by masculinity theory and informed by a social constructionist epistemology, the research explores how hegemonic gender norms in Nigerian society shape not only the experiences of CRSV, but also victims' coping strategies, silences, and the (in)visibility of their suffering. It explores how male expectations in a patriarchal culture based on masculine norms inform/shape their stories and experiences of CRSV through the voice of humanitarian actors/civilian helpers. This lens helps in exploring and understanding the silencing of male victims who are harmed, the trauma they face, how they cope

and how their needs are being addressed. It argues that men and boys in a patriarchal culture who have been sexually harmed and violated are tarnished in such manner that they are feminised, emasculated and homosexualised. Ultimately, the findings reveal that male victims are not only physically violated but

are also symbolically emasculated, feminised, and homosexualised threatening their perceived roles as protectors and providers in a patriarchal context.

Drawing primarily on fieldwork, this thesis argues that CRSV involving male victims is a difficult and almost intractable problem in patriarchal societies like Nigeria, because men lack the social scripts or vocabulary to process and articulate their experiences of sexual violation perpetrated against them by other men. It is such a taboo that it cannot be openly discussed or even acknowledged. This serves to compound the victimisation of male victims/survivors and freezes them in a state of trauma that they cannot verbalise or purge from their being. In all, this thesis underlines that the culture of silence shapes societal beliefs of male sexual victimisation such that it makes sexual victimisation of men and boys invisible or

difficult to discuss.