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NGO Calls For Strong Movement Against Sexual And Gender Based Violence

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Executive Director of Women’s Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) Dr Abiola Akinyode has called for a strong movement against Sexual and Gender Based Violence.

Dr Akiyode while speaking on the Spotlight project on Star 101.5 fm in Lagos, said with happenings in the society, it has reached the level where organizations need to keep talking about gender-based violence in Nigeria.

For WARDC, the organisation she represents, she said building a movement is about empowering people because people must understand what the laws are and what the law says.

According to Dr. Akiyode, there are some places where they already have laws. She noted that such could be seen in Lagos where there is a domestic violence prohibition law which has been in existence since 2006, despite the cases of domestic violence in the state.

She recalled that there is the domestic violence response team who are directly working to address the issue but reports of domestic violence still come in because of the large population in Lagos, a state with about 20million people.

“On average, WARDC gets about 50 or more cases in a month meaning an average of 5-6 people walk-in weekly to talk about their situation”

Dr. Akiyode admitted that people are talking about it but it has not reached the grass root communities which has saddled her organisation with the responsibility of so one of building a movement so that they can get responses and attend to them issues in the grassroots.

“The Women’s Advocate Research and Documentation Centre is present in twelve local government areas in Lagos state where we talk to people about their situation and also try to respond and it. This pattern became very useful in the lockdown where people could not move around and it became easier for respondents to those kinds of women who were being abused”

Dr. Akinyode specified that the spotlight initiative is to address gender-based violence with the support of everyone and also try to identify as many stakeholders as possible that can help in amplifying the issue, ensuring that they respond to the issues.

For those who cannot read and write in the communities, Dr Akinyode said the Women’s advocate research and Documentation centre in collaboration with the Ministry of Women Affairs and poverty alleviation have jingles in Yoruba, Pidgin, English which in turn increased phone calls and messages from different people. She said some people sent messages in Yoruba to talk about their issues and a whole lot of text messages where saying poverty contributed to the crisis they have.

She explained that language of communication also matters to be able to get to the grass root and give the kind of information they needed to pass across. So they try as much as possible to use the kind of language that the people in rural communities can relate to.

For those who may be facing Gender-Based Violence without knowing it, she said the signs could be in the person showing anger in everything and trying to raise hands on their spouses or moving closer in anger.

She mentioned cases of people who have lived together for as long as eight to nine years before manifesting domestic violence, meaning that there are some signs that people don’t see immediately but there could be signs from the way the person pushes arguments forward or the way the person relates with other people.

Dr. Abiola Akiyode rounded off by saying said Gender based violence is not just physical, some are emotional and can be seen in cases where partners stay together but don’t talk to each other for days so there are lots of things to look out for.

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