They were allegedly murdered by their ‘partners.’ Now, mothers of these femicide victims seek justice

Image description: A collage consisting of 2 women at the center, screenshots of tweets scattered behind them, and a protest poster in the front. The eyes of these women are covered in streaks of red, and on the background, there is an image of a protest. The tweets in this artwork are about cases of women who were murdered.

Sarah Ndunge Musyoki, 20. 

On the evening of January 28, 2024, Sarah Ndunge Musyoki, a 20-year-old woman, was viciously attacked and stabbed while on her way to the market. Bystanders and neighbours rushed her to Mother and Child Hospital in Eastleigh, Nairobi.

Musyoki’s mother, Felister Wayua, received news of the knife attack moments later and hurried to the hospital. Upon arrival, Musyoki informed her mother that the alleged assailant was Mwangi, her ex-boyfriend.

“Mummy, nilidungwa na Mwangi na mimi nitakufa. Sasa Mummy nikikufa nipeleke kwa shosho yangu, (Mummy, I was stabbed by Mwangi and I am going to die. Now mummy, when I die, take me to my grandmother),” Wayua recalls, adding that that was Musyoki’s final wish as she lay dying.

The severity of Musyoki’s injuries prompted Mother and Child Hospital to refer her to a higher-level facility. Tragically, Musyoki passed away before she could be transferred.

Hailing from the Biafra informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, Musyoki had humble beginnings and aspired to attend college. She aimed to achieve this goal by working odd jobs while learning to print and sell clothes in a nearby market, saving up for her future studies. Her mother described her as kind and cheerful. Musyoki was beloved by her many friends and doted on her younger sisters, often showering them with gifts.

Wayua promptly reported the incident to Shauri Moyo Police Station the same day, handing over Musyoki’s phone as potential evidence, as it allegedly contained threatening messages from Mwangi. In one such message, Mwangi purportedly vowed to inflict harm on Musyoki that her family would never forget.

Despite the evidence provided, no arrests have been made, and the alleged perpetrator remains at large as investigations continue. Minority Africa contacted the Kenyan police and the officer in charge of the case multiple times. While we were initially promised a response, we have yet to receive any updates. 

In recent years, Kenya media reports show a sharp rise in cases of women being killed by intimate partners. However, there is no official tracking of all women who are victims of gender-based violence and, in particular, femicide. 

According to statistics released by Africa Data Hub, which has been tracking femicide cases reported in newspapers, 546 women and girls were killed in Kenya between 2016 and 2023. Cases of gender-based violence and femicide, which is an extreme form of gender violence, dominated the news at the beginning of the year 2024. 

Over ten women lost their lives to violence at the hands of men in January 2024 alone. Two notable femicide cases which hit the news in that same month were that of the late Scarlet Wahu, who was murdered on January 3, and Rita Waeni, murdered on January 14. Their death sparked the largest-ever femicide protests recorded in Kenya, which took place in various towns and counties on the 27th of January, with activists calling the government to declare femicide a national crisis. The Nairobi protest was dubbed #TotalShutDownKe.

However, the issue of femicide without justice or delayed justice is not limited to Kenya but is prevalent in other African countries as well.

Okeoghene Wetan, 30. 

On the 31st of August 2023, Tedia Wetan received a call to come back home that her daughter was lying on the floor of their apartment unresponsive. Wetan could feel the walls of her world crumbling as she hurried to Abuja airport to get on the next flight to Lagos. She hoped and prayed it was nothing serious. Hopefully, she’d see the bright smile her daughter freely gives. She got to Lagos and saw an ambulance in front of her gate. 

“I saw Oke’s body, and I immediately felt cold. No mother deserves this! No mother deserves to see her child lifeless,” she says.  

What came next was a series of revelations that caused more pain to the family. The Nigerian police initially ignored Wetan’s plea to track her daughter’s phone, which was stolen the same morning her daughter was killed. According to Wetan, they claimed to be carrying out their investigations. 

On her own, Wetan discovered that her daughter was often seen with a certain man in the neighbourhood. Oke’s friends and neighbours testified to her about how close they were, and when she dug deeper, she learnt the man was David Okereke, who was once introduced to Wetan as Oke’s church member and friend. 

In search of justice, Wetan hired a private investigator, who tracked Oke’s phone to its last location before it was turned off. According to her, this location is the gym that Okereke frequented. Wetan went to the police with this new revelation and requested they bring Okereke in for questioning. 

“The Nigerian police asked me to bring 1 million naira so they can track him in Kwara State,” she says, noting this was in spite of her own investigation which pinpointed him to be in Lagos. 

Wetan kept reporting the findings of her private investigator to the police. After weeks of no positive results from the police, even after giving them Okereke’s exact location, she tried to move on. 

Weeks after, she got a call from the police to come down to Lagos because Okereke had been caught. In a state of frenzy, she took the next available flight to Lagos, and there, she stood face-to-face with her daughter’s alleged killer. So many emotions filled her — the most prominent of all was anger. 

“I saw him, and it felt like the wound was fresh again. He is a reminder of my daughter’s horrible death.” 

According to Wetan, Okereke denied ever having any intimate relationship with the late Oke and described their relationship as simply platonic, even after eyewitnesses claimed the opposite. Subsequently, the police released Okereke without Wetan’s knowledge on account of not having enough evidence to nail him to the crime since her daughter’s phone was nowhere in sight.

Wetan tried persuading the Nigerian police to track her daughter’s phone so they could find proof of Okereke and Oke’s relationship,  but she received threats of a lawsuit from Okereke’s parents if she continued. 

When asked what she remembers about her daughter, she says, in tears, “I am her mother; I remember everything. Oke has never gone through a hard time before. This is the first and the last. How do I move on, knowing my Oke is no more? I don’t know what to do.”

Minority Africa reached out to the Nigerian police with our findings and requested an update on the case, but we have not received a response. 

Issues facing the legal system in cases of femicide

On December 14, 2023, Naftali Kinuthia was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the murder of the late Ivy Wangechi. Wangechi was a 5th-year medical student of Moi University in Kenya. Kinuthia was found guilty after a four-year trial at Eldoret High Court. Wangechi was hacked to death in front of her school after refusing Kinuthia’s advances. Kiroko Ndegwa was the prosecuting lawyer in the case, which reached national and international prominence. 

One of the major issues faced by the legal system when it comes to prosecuting femicide cases in Kenya is that it often results in a very long court process. In some cases, it takes such a long time that the families of the deceased lose hope of ever getting justice for their loved ones.

In an interview in his office, Ndegwa, who was the lead counsel in the late Ivy Wangechi femicide trial, opined that the extended time taken in the judicial process of Ivy Wangechi’s case is because the presiding Judge was transferred midway through the trial.

“This caused a lot of legal technical difficulties to the proceedings, which included the prospect of the trial starting afresh,” Ndegwa recalls. “This is especially true, as the mother of the deceased, Winfred Waithera King’ori, complained to the media about the slow process of the case and voiced concerns that she might not get justice for her murdered daughter.” 

Continuing on the difficulties the change of presiding Judge brought about while prosecuting this case, Ndegwa says,  “The challenge with this is that, if you choose to proceed from where you had left off, then the new judge is not able to interact with the witnesses, get to notice their demeanour. On the other hand, if you begin afresh (de novo) there is (the) likelihood that the enthusiasm of some of the witnesses will be dampened, and (you) end up with frustrated witnesses.’’

Another systemic problem plaguing the judicial system in Kenya, when it comes to femicide prosecution, is how the court of law limits the participation of the families of the victims during proceedings. The legal system in Kenya, as explained by Ndegwa, is unfriendly towards families of victims, despite the provisions of article 50 sub-article 7 of the constitution, which states “that victim’s families also have a right to be heard.” 

“Judicial officials restrict their participation, even though the law makes provision for that. Oftentimes, the accused is given a state-appointed advocate if they are unable to afford one, but this same courtesy is not usually extended to the families of the victims,” Ndegwa says.

Furthermore, in femicide cases in Kenya, witnesses usually fear for their lives whenever the court grants bail to the accused, according to Ndegwa. He said there have been cases where perpetrators were released on bail and lead witnesses shied away from giving their testimonies or (in some cases) retracted their testimonies. Sometimes, leading witnesses are not interviewed.

According to a report by African Data Hub, in Kenya, after a perpetrator has been arrested, it takes an average of 1900 days for a femicide case to be concluded in court. In these cases, defence counsel would often ask for adjournment of court proceedings unnecessarily, which in turn causes delays in dispensing justice for the victim’s families. This tactic usually works to discourage witnesses owing to the cost of transportation and time factor involved. At the very least, it dampens the enthusiasm of witnesses and sometimes discourages them from stepping out to testify after witnessing a crime.  

This usually leads to delay of justice and, in some cases, miscarriage of justice. Most times, when the alleged killers are people from rich or powerful families, intimidation of witnesses from lesser means is rampant. Kenya’s inability to establish a well-functioning witness protection service is also a significant factor in why witnesses don’t come forward. Since 2016, there have been over 500 femicide cases in Kenya; only 13 verdicts have been reached. 

This is also the fate of Wetan and hundreds of others in Nigeria, who are compelled to abandon their pursuit of justice due to the shortcomings of the system. Nigerian laws present significant hurdles in achieving justice for victims of femicide. Unlike murder, there is no specific legislation that explicitly addresses femicide in Nigeria. Despite the illegality of murder, the killing of a woman specifically because of her gender is not recognised as a distinct crime.

“(Femicide) is not in our legal dictionary. Femicide has to be legalised because when a crime isn’t accurately named, then justice cannot prevail,” says Ms Ololade Ajayi, the founder of DOHS Cares Foundation, an organisation that advocates for the rights of women and children. 

“This makes the prosecution reliant on fitting the crime under murder charges, which may not fully capture the gender-based motive,” she adds.

See Also

“A game changer”: How a Kenyan radio station is reviving a dying indigenous language

On April 4, 2024, DOHS Cares Foundation and allies came out in their numbers to seek justice for the death of thousands of women and young girls who died as a result of femicide. The organisation created a bill and submitted it to the Lagos State House of Assembly. This bill seeks to fix the loopholes in the Nigerian law that prevent justice from prevailing and for femicide to be recognised as a crime in Nigeria.

Nigeria grapples with a long-standing history of gender-based violence and femicide, with cases consistently making the news. Available data from the West African nation suggests that 5.7 out of every 100,000 women and girls fell victim to femicide in 2016, more than double the global average of 2.6. An estimated 401 femicide cases were recorded in Nigeria in the year 2022 alone.

Across Africa, women are being murdered at alarming rates, often by intimate partners or a male family member. Tragically, the continent had the most femicides by intimate partners and family members in 2022, with an estimated 20,000 women and girls losing their lives. 

Augusta Osedion, 21. 

Another of such cases is in Nigeria where Augusta Osedion was allegedly murdered by her boyfriend, Benjamin Best on July 13th, 2023. 

When she did not hear from her daughter in three days, Cordelia Okonye,  Osedion’s mother went to Best’s house searching for her daughter but found the gate locked. After several unsuccessful attempts to gain entry, she contacted the local police and forcefully entered Best’s house. 

“What I saw is forever etched in my mind: my daughter lying in a pool of her own blood.”

Best had been pretending to be  Osedion, chatting with Okonye to cover his tracks after killing her and taking her phone, according to Okonye. 

Since that day, Okonye has continued to seek justice for her daughter, even going as far as tracking her daughter’s alleged killer to Sierra Leone. Best confessed to the crime on his social media accounts which had been under the handle “Killaboi.” 

Yet, the Nigerian police have done little or nothing to make a formal arrest, even after the family provided his exact location to the authorities, according to Okonye. 

“I tracked him to Sierra Leone and gave all the information I had on him to the Nigerian police. Yet there wasn’t any positive outcome,” she tells Minority Africa. 

The Nigerian police did not respond to requests for updates on this case either. 

Okonye remembers  Osedion as a friendly, compassionate, intelligent young lady and a go-getter. She was in her final year at university, studying Medical Laboratory Science with a CGPA of 4.76, and was also excelling in her career as an influencer.

“Some people have said a lot of things about my daughter. Some said he was sponsoring her lifestyle, and all sorts, but it isn’t true. My daughter was kind, intelligent, and thoughtful. It is quite sad that she was killed by the person who claimed to love her.”

Okonye has not given up on finding Best. She continues to publicly call for help in finding his location, who according to her has “long paid for his freedom out of police custody in Sierra Leone”.

On what would have been  Osedion’s 22nd birthday, Okonye visited her grave and reiterated her commitment to finding justice. 

“I can’t fight him, but I know my God will fight him. Rest well, mummy.”

Edited/Reviewed by PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, Samuel Banjoko, Uzoma Ihejirika, and Adebola Makinde.