…Wants tougher sanctions for SGBV

By Dirisu Yakubu

As Nigeria joined the rest of the world to mark the International Women’s Day, a call has been made by a pro-women group, Baobab for a more people-centred and fact-based reportage of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, SGBV.

Executive Director of Baobab, Bunmi Dipo-Salami made the call at a training workshop on leadership and responsive reporting of sexual violence in Abuja.

The training workshop, which held in partnership with the African Women’s Development Fund, AWDF, is designed to use a gender analysis framework to understand how to develop the self for leadership, communicate and form partnerships to evolve effective advocacy strategies and develop the capacity of the participants to create an accurate narrative that is gender responsive while reporting issues or cases sexual violence.

According to Dipo-Salami, Nigeria is one of the countries of the world where Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, SGBV is a major constraint to the actualization of the rights and well-being of women, girls and person’s living with disabilities.

This is even as she added that “available data on SGBV in Nigeria indicate that about 30 per cent of women and girls experience physical and/or sexual abuse. In her words, “even with the cocktail of laws and policies informed by constitutional provisions as well as international and regional human rights covenants and agreements ratified by Nigeria at various times; women, children and girls are still not protected from SGBV.”

In her opening address, Osai Ojigho, Country Director, Amnesty International, there have been concerted effort to have the gender equality bill passed, lamenting however that the National Assembly recently rejected the bill.

Ojigho identified cultural and religious barriers as factors partly making the fight against SGBV difficult. She called on journalists to go the whole distance in reporting sexual crimes and crimes against women, noting that whatever goes against the law is against humanity.

Director, Africa’s office of the MacArthur Foundation, Kole Shettima said an independent and economically-viable mediia must be in place to adequately report SGBV.

“To report sexual and gender based violence, we need a free and independent media. To tackle sexual based violence, we have to learn and unlearn. We need to unlearn some of the things we learned in the past,” he said.

Also speaking, Dr. Fatima Waziri, Director General, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, represented by the agency’s director, research and programme development, Olubiyi Olusayo, called for stringent penalties against Gender-Based Violence.