By Theresa Moses
Thee Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline K. Tallen has said that his ministry has reached out to the Inspector of Police and the judicial system with a view to ensuring that no case of gender base violence is special and also encourage victims to speak up against abuses.
As a result, she noted that “We are encouraging every state to have safe home or place where victims would be cared for”.
Tallen spoke in Lagos recently at the opening of a 5-Day Gender Based Violence Data Indicator Harmonization Workshop for the National Strategic Knowledge Management Technical Working Group.
The Minister of Women Affairs said that the successful implementation of the current Federal Government of Nigeria’s Economic Growth and Recovery Programme (ERGP), a medium-term plan (2017-2020) which builds on Strategic Implementations Plan (SIP) would be largely dependent on the availability of disaggregated data to guide all stakeholders on strategic interventions and the development of analyses and presentation on data for effective decision making.
“It’s important to note that data is effective in decision making, hence restoring economic growth is hinged on it.
“As a result, the journey towards building a Harmonised Database for harvesting credible Gender-Based Violence data in the country was birth on 15th May, 2020 with the launch of the National Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Data Collation Tool, with support from UNDP under the Spotlight Initiative to ease the dearth of GBV data in Nigeria with directives that every partner and stakeholder should use the tool to collate and submit GBV data to the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs for standardization.
“The ERGP has been developed for the purpose of restoring economic growth, hinged on the aspirations of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” Tallen reemphasized.
While speaking to journalists, the Commissioner for Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation (WAPA), Lagos State, Hon. Cecilia Bolaji Dada lamented the believe that the male gender are superior to the female gender, difficulty in reporting molestation or and any form of sexual base violence.
“Unfortunately in this country, there is this culture that the male gender are superior to the female gender and also in the past, people find it difficult to report when they are been molested or/and, any form of sexual base violence.
“But going forward in Lagos state, we have been able to do a lot of advocacy, sensitization programme for women to be able to speak out, for Government, Non Governmental Organisations (NGO), and Stakeholders to be able to fight against all forms of gender violence.
“For us, I’d like everybody to know that when you find yourself in any of this situation, the number to call is 08000333222 because Lagos has zero tolerance to all forms of violence,” she reiterated.
According to Mr. Yinka Akibu, M&E Focal Person, UN System in Nigeria highlighted some efforts put in place to winning gender violence in Nigeria.
“Be it emotional violence or economic violence also called intimate partner violence; it’s very high globally, and a big concern.
“Going forward, there are international strategies that is effective and that’s what we are deploying here. One of it is to ensure male engagement initiative that helps engage the boys.
“The idea of engaging boys is to ensure that they know it’s not a manly thing for you to beat a girl. It does not show you are a true man. We start with the boys at schools and begin to re-orient them that a true man takes care of women, loves women, helps women and support women.
“At that stage, we believe that we are educating, re-positioning and removing that male masculinity that is driving the gender base violence. If you do that for young boys, as they grow they begin to act right when they are men and married, resulting to less violence.
“Also, we are using religious leaders to educate young men not to beat a woman or economically abuse woman, rather must provide for your house as stated in the Holy Books (Bible and Quran) as most people believe what their pastors or Imam say”.
It would be recalled that the Spotlight Initiative is a partnership between European Union and the United Nations and is the flagship programme on elimination of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Nigeria implemented in five states plus the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
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