A peaceful march by some Nigerian women took place on Saturday with the aim of giving out a warning against sexual harassment in markets, notifying attention to unsaid incidents of bullying, name calling of their gender among other vices by male folk.
The march which took place in Lagos kicked off from Ojuelegba and headed to Yaba, where demonstrators faced confrontation, despite the presence of police.
Moromoke on Twitter said “Yaba boys threw water and stones at us. It was as if we unleashed the beast in them and today I saw the physical demonstration of misogyny. They got aggressive and resorted to physical abuse.
“They made derogatory remarks about our person, they called us jobless and said we are prostitutes, they boo’ed us and sang shaming songs after us just because we made our stand known and said we won’t take the harassment no more. I’m still shook, like their entitlement!
“How aggressive can one get over someone else’s body? Those guys were not remorseful, in fact they believe that they have the right to our bodies and they made that quite clear even though we held placards saying ‘Don’t touch me’ they still tried to touch us”, she wrote.
Another tweet says “They threw water at us, called us prostitutes, sluts…ashawo. They said it was our fault that we got harassed.They claimed it was because of our clothing and asked us to stay home if we didn’t want to be harassed. They tried to shame us because they were ashamed”by Market match.
Meanwhile the organisers were optimistic about the success of the demonstration stating that it “was a BIG success”.
Big ups and huge thank you to everyone who showed up. We had expectations, some were met, and others were superseded. We stood firmly with one voice and it was clear. We have learnt a lot and can’t wait to do more with what we know”.
In spite of the confrontation, the women have vowed to stage yet another demonstration very soon. They had however rallied under the hashtag #marketmatchYaba.
#Marketmatch in its definition of its agenda has it as“Walking & working together to end the normalized sexual harassment &bullying of women in market.”
