She Must Be Mad’: The Nigerian Playbook for Silencing Women”

When a woman in Nigeria dares to speak, the country finds a hundred ways to call her mad.
It doesn’t matter whether she’s a celebrity, a politician’s wife, or an ordinary woman trying to survive a bad marriage. Once she breaks the silence, the system finds a way to break her. Her pain becomes a punchline, her story dismissed as hysteria, her truth twisted into proof of instability.

We saw it again with the recent Gina Dans situation. The online chaos, the quick descent into whispers that she must be “on something” or “mentally unstable.” It’s a familiar playbook. In Nigeria, when a powerful man is exposed, the easiest way to protect him is to destroy the woman’s credibility. Call her mad, label her promiscuous, accuse her of addiction, and watch the public do the rest. And the public never disappoints.

We’ve seen this pattern for years.
When Tonto Dikeh left her marriage and spoke about domestic abuse, the internet dragged her for months, branding her erratic, bitter, and unstable. When Annie Idibia voiced her pain over betrayal, she was told to calm down and stop embarrassing her husband. When Tiwa Savage spoke about the emotional wreckage of her marriage, the mockery targeted her, not her ex-husband. “She must be high.” “She’s doing it for attention.”
Chacha Eke’s cry for help was dismissed as mental illness until her silence became impossible to ignore. And when Precious Chikwendu, the ex-wife of former Aviation Minister Femi Fani-Kayode, spoke about enduring violence and fighting for custody of her children, the headlines called her unstable and promiscuous.

This script isn’t just Nigerian. It’s global. From Britney Spears to Amber Heard, we’ve watched the same pattern unfold again and again.
When Britney tried to reclaim control over her life after years of legal and emotional captivity, she was mocked as crazy. The world forgot she was a young woman exploited by an industry built to profit from her pain. Her humanity was erased in real time until the FreeBritney movement forced people to see what they’d ignored all along. She wasn’t mad. She was trapped.

With Amber Heard, the same story played out differently. Regardless of personal opinions, her testimony about abuse became internet entertainment. Her tears were memes. Her words dissected and ridiculed. The conversation stopped being about domestic violence and became about humiliation as spectacle. Her ex-husband’s charisma insulated him while she was branded unstable and manipulative. The message was clear: speak up, and we’ll make you regret it.

Change the names, change the countries, and the story remains the same.
A man’s reputation becomes sacred. A woman’s credibility becomes disposable. Her trauma becomes gossip. Her truth becomes madness.

Even women in politics aren’t spared.
When Nigerian senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio of sexual harassment in March 2025, the backlash was immediate. Instead of investigating her claims, the Senate suspended her without due process. What followed was textbook misogyny: media stories about her unstable behaviour, multiple lovers, and mental health issues. Her truth was buried under slander, proving again how quickly power moves to protect itself.

Months later, in October 2025, Patience Akpabio, a gospel artist and sister-in-law to the Senate President, posted a series of videos accusing him of corruption, violence, and moral decay. Within days, her words were dismissed as delusion. Family members called her unstable. Political allies demanded she retract her claims. There was no investigation, only public condemnation and pressure to silence her.

Here’s the thing: men in these stories hold power, political, social, or financial. That power lets them rewrite the script. They turn abuse into discipline, control into love, and their victims into villains. And it keeps happening.

This culture of silencing women runs deeper than gossip blogs and celebrity headlines. It’s the machinery of patriarchy weaponizing perception. Once a woman’s sanity or morality is questioned, her truth no longer matters. Even her motherhood becomes negotiable.

This doesn’t end online. It continues in courtrooms, in custody battles, in homes where women are stripped of their children not because they’re unfit, but because their husbands have more money, more lawyers, or more influence.
The family courts are not neutral. They are mirrors of a society that still believes men own women and that women who speak must be punished. Even children become pawns in these power games, reminders of who truly holds control.

At WHER Initiative, we see the fallout every day. Women, especially LBQGNC persons, come to us labeled, disbelieved, and broken. Many are survivors of violence who know that seeking justice could cost them their reputations, their livelihoods, or their children. In Nigeria, it’s not enough for a woman to survive. She must also prove she’s sane, moral, and worthy of empathy.

But here’s the truth: calling a woman mad or an addict has never been about her health. It’s a political act. It’s how patriarchy disguises its violence as concern. It’s how abusers shift attention from what they did to what she said. It’s how power protects itself by discrediting the pain of those who expose it.

We must stop normalizing this. Stop laughing when a woman is humiliated for speaking. Stop rewarding men who twist narratives to hide abuse.
Every time we call a woman mad for telling her story, we send a message to millions of others: stay silent or be destroyed. That silence costs lives.

It’s time to listen differently. To believe differently.
Because the real madness isn’t in women’s voices. It’s in a society that protects abusers and punishes survivors for surviving.

Women’s pain is not hysteria. Our voices are not delusion. Our anger is not madness.
It’s truth. And the world needs to start hearing it.

By Giwa, for WHER Initiative