Written By Bernard Otu Assim-ita
Contributors: Amaechi Peace Chiamaka and Aisha Inuwa
Writers Note: This Article, is based on EVA’s field reports from drama/dialogue sessions and football engagements supported by UNFPA in Imo and Ebonyi.
In Ebonyi, the first thing that changes is the room.
A student steps into the center of a school hall and begins to speak as if she is someone’s daughter, because she is. Around her, classmates act out a family scene many people recognize. An elder insists that cutting is tradition. A mother hesitates, caught between fear and belonging. A girl stands quietly while adults decide what will happen to her body.
It is not graphic. It does not need to be. The power of the drama is that it gives shape to what is often hidden behind softer language. It makes people sit with the consequences long enough to feel them.
This was the heart of Education as a Vaccine’s approach in Imo and Ebonyi States, supported by UNFPA. EVA used drama and parent dialogue sessions in schools, then took the conversation to a football pitch to reach boys, men, and wider community members. The goal was not to provoke communities or embarrass anyone. It was to open space for honest reflection, and to help families and young people move toward abandoning FGM together.
After the drama in Ebonyi, facilitators invited the audience into a guided reflection. The design was intentional. Drama came first to surface emotion and recognition, followed by discussion that allowed questions to rise, then a parent dialogue session that confronted the myths and norms adults pass down.
Then a parent spoke in a way that shifted the conversation from theory to truth. She explained that she had only just learned that massaging and pressing can be categorized under Type IV FGM. She said it had been done to her, and she repeated it with her own children. Not because she wanted harm, but because she did not understand what it was or what it could mean.
In moments like that, silence breaks in two directions. The room becomes quieter, and people begin to talk more honestly. Another parent in Ebonyi shared her lived experience of being mutilated and the long-term challenges she has faced. She urged others to abandon the practice, describing it as something with no health benefits. It was not a speech. It was a warning delivered with the authority of experience. It was also an invitation, asking others to choose differently for their daughters.
Across the drama and parent dialogue sessions in both states, EVA recorded 284 participants, largely women and girls, hosted in government schools. The sessions also included state stakeholders such as the Ministry of Women Affairs, Ministry of Health, and education structures. Their presence helped address misconceptions and connect what people were hearing to the wider public health and legal context.
But the sessions also revealed a reality EVA has learned to expect. Some people resist when tradition feels threatened. FGM is tied to identity and belonging, and people defend what they know even when it harms girls. The report notes that conversations around culture and tradition require delicate attention, because mindset change cannot be forced. In Ebonyi, you could see both things at once. Defensive reactions. Quiet moments of reconsideration. A room learning how to hold a difficult truth without turning on itself.
From Ebonyi, the work moved to Imo, and to a very different kind of gathering. A football pitch is not a seminar room. People arrive with noise and energy. They come for teams, competition, pride. EVA chose the pitch for that reason. Too often, FGM conversations are treated as something women must carry alone. Yet the social environment around girls is shaped by entire families and communities. Fathers and brothers. Elders and peers. If those voices are not engaged, silence returns quickly.
Across Imo and Ebonyi, EVA documented 327 participants and spectators during the football tournament, most of them male. Awareness conversations were delivered in local dialect, which helped comprehension and participation. Participants were also encouraged to write pledge cards as a visible commitment against FGM.
Even on the pitch, resistance appeared. The tournament report describes a moment in Imo when a female spectator initially defended FGM as culture. As dialogue continued, she began to reconsider after discussing the short- and long-term consequences. It was not a dramatic turnaround. It was something quieter and more realistic. A person loosening her grip on an idea she had been taught to protect.
The football engagement also offered a practical lesson for scale. The report notes that halftime messaging sometimes competed with the excitement of the match, and recommends engaging players before the match when attention is higher and discussion can go deeper.
Across both states, the combined approach showed why EVA chose arts and sports as entry points. Drama can make harm visible in a way that facts alone sometimes cannot. EVA describes it as an edutainment approach that is entertaining but deeply instructive. Football can bring boys and men into the conversation without confrontation, meeting them in a space they already trust and enjoy. Dialogue, when done carefully, can turn defensiveness into reflection.
The reports also point to what is needed next. Scaling this approach will require earlier engagement with traditional and community leaders, more time for dialogue, and stronger follow-up so commitments do not fade after the event day. In communities where norms are sustained collectively, change must be sustained collectively too.
FGM does not end in one week. But a week can disrupt the quiet normalisation of harm. In Ebonyi, a parent named what she had never understood, and that naming made room for a different choice. In Imo, a conversation continued even when resistance showed up, and someone began to reconsider what she once defended.
And somewhere between the school courtyard and the football pitch, something shifted. Students told a story adults could not ignore. Parents spoke what they had kept inside for years. Young people listened, played, and made commitments in public. It was not sensational. It was not perfect. It was human, and it was possible.