The issue has received rare public attention after the emergence of an online video in which a woman is apparently gang-raped and pleads with her assailants to kill her.
This followed another recent incident in which it was alleged that a young woman assigned to a community to perform volunteer service had been raped by a traditional ruler.
Local campaigners hope that a show of anger on the streets – possibly on 25 November, the International Day Against Violence Against Women – will force Nigeria's leaders to end a conspiracy of silence.
Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, executive director of the Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre, said: "There is still a lot of hush-hush around it in Nigeria. That's why the problem is as bad as it is. But all that's happened in the past three months shows that rape and sexual violence is a major issue."
Akiyode-Afolabi criticised the Nigerian government for a lacklustre response.
"Nothing has been put into action. Our laws are still not clear. The woman who wants to report rape does not have the confidence in the justice system in Nigeria. The police are not accountable to the people. There is a lot of impunity on the issue of rape and sexual violence in Nigeria."
The country could learn from reporting mechanisms and laws pioneered by Liberia, she added. "The Nigerian government has failed to protect women. We need to hold it accountable. There is a need for immediate steps to create laws and institutions that protect women."
Officially, rape is rare in Nigeria. In a country of 140 million people, there were just 1,952 cases in 2009, according to federal police statistics posted on a website called Nigeria Police Watch. But a 2006 Amnesty International study said reporting was thought to be "sporadic, piecemeal and inconsistent".
The wave of public revulsion has been triggered by an online video that purports to show five men taking turns to rape a woman in a university dormitory.
In the grainy footage, the five men promise to drive the woman home, pushing her back down each time she starts to stand up. The woman cries several times: "Please just kill me." The men laugh.
The 10-minute video had circulated for weeks around the campus of Abia State University near the Niger delta before being posted on the internet. It appears to take place in a single-room dormitory or student hostel.
Nigeria's youth minister, Bolaji Abdullahi, called for the university and police to arrest and prosecute the men shown in the video, as well as offering assistance to the woman.
"The attitude of these men, if indeed they are young Nigerians, does not represent the character and nature of the Nigerian youth," the minister said.
On Thursday, Nigerian MPs roundly condemned the act and mandated the police to investigate.
But the university and state government officials have reportedly denied the video's authenticity and that it took place near or on the university grounds.
Josephine Effah-Chukwuma, executive director of the Nigerian women's rights group called Project Alert, told the Associated Press: "The perpetrators go further to record it and circulate it. It shows for me that they're daring society to take action on it. It shows that there's a high level of impunity."
Amnesty's 2006 report, entitled Rape - the Silent Weapon, found that rape of women and girls by the police and security forces, and within their homes and community, was "endemic" in Nigeria. Last year the Open Society Justice Initiative accused Nigerian police of committing rapes, particularly of sex workers, along with extrajudicial killings and torture in custody.
Joe Okei-Odumakin, president of the activist network Women Arise, said on Thursday: "Impunity is on the rise because of our inability to bring the perpetrators to book. Rape and sexual violence have become a regular occurrence, a norm in Nigeria. Women don't think they will be believed so they won't openly give their side of the story."