Written by Tezor Dedam
After what seemed like the longest breakup, Efe could not shake off her ex. He was adamant: waiting for her outside the gym, calling her mother, and sending her voice notes that could pass for audiobooks. She was gentle and graceful; it was a rough time for both of them. But then things got incredibly worse when he started sending her intimate photos and videos of herself, material she had shared with him months prior when they were actively dating.
Every Snapchat notification with his name attached to it started to feel weirder and weirder. She confronted him about these pictures and videos, and he claimed she was the one who sent them to him in the first place. Weeks later, these messages came with subtle threats,
“If I was a bad person now, I would have sent these pictures to people from our church youth group”
Then it spiralled from there into months of abuse, blackmail, and gaslighting. It was a long, draining, and systematic game of chess that she is still traumatised by.
According to the Nigerian Computer Emergency Response Team (ngCERT), 54,000 Nigerians have been caught in a surge of sextortion scams, with reported cases spiking 30% between October 2024 and March 2025. There’s no threshold for trust, and if it can’t happen to you, then it can happen to your friend, cousin, brother, colleague, or niece.
Here’s where to get help if you are being sextorted.
Sextortion can be for money, favours, more pictures/videos or just outright abuse.
If money is the case, paying up rarely makes it go away. So paying will probably be a bad idea. They will probably ask for more after you pay the first time, and you’ll just be digging yourself further into a ditch.
You should also screenshot everything. If you’re tempted to wipe everything as a way to make it all go away, you are better off documenting all of it – their messages, profile pictures/details, phone numbers, emails, payment details, everything.
You can actually have your pictures removed from the internet. StopNCII.org is the single most useful tool in this regard, and so many people might not know it exists. To use this platform, you upload the image on your own device and convert it into a digital fingerprint, known as a hash.
This image will not be uploaded to StopNCII or anywhere on the web. The platform uses digital fingerprinting technology and shares this digital fingerprint (the hash) across social media platforms such as Meta/Instagram/Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit, Bumble, Pornhub, OnlyFans, Threads, etc.
So basically, you can automatically block it from ever being posted or reposted on these sites. This can be done before the images are shared, and can even block the images after they have been shared. The platform will continue to scrub the internet for these images/videos moving forward, and you can choose to withdraw your case at any time.
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Your first choice here would be the Nigerian Police Force (NPF). The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) is the designated party for this. The NPF-NCCC have an e-reporting portal for filing complaints without having to visit the station: nccc.npf.gov.ng/ereport. You can email them at [email protected], and call them via +2349168343711 and +2349168343710.
However, some discretion should be exercised in this regard. Research from Amnesty International has associated victim-blaming, dismissive treatment, financial extortion, gender stereotyping and lack of empathy with the Nigerian police in cases like this.
You can also thread the path of NAPTIP (National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons), which now has a dedicated Cybersecurity Response Team handling sextortion and online exploitation specifically. You can reach them on these hotlines: 07030000203 or the shortcode 627.
If you have paid any money, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) can be contacted as well.
If you want to get a sense of what is going on, how to navigate it, and what support is available, there are a group of organisations that pair legal support with trauma support.
Women at Risk International Foundation (WARIF), Mirable Centre, Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team, Lagos State, and Cece Yara Foundation (for minors) are just some of the organisations you can get in contact with.
They not only provide legal advice, emotional support, and trauma care; they can also help you with a better understanding of your own peculiar situation and the right steps to take.
Sextortion is usually intended to make you feel like you have no options. It leverages shame and thrives on silence. So the moment you act in the right way, you take power back from the blackmailer, and you just might be saving the next person as well. So act fast, document everything, and remind yourself that help is always available.
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