Lagos community, group partner against gender-based violence
By Oluwatope Lawanson
Adaranijo community and Women Liberation and Transformation Group at a sensitisation against gender-based violence in Lagos on Thursday.
The Adaranijo community in Lagos, on Thursday, partnered with Women Liberation and Transformation Group (W-LIT) to sensitise members of the community on how to end violence against women and the girl-child.
President of the group, Mrs Olanike Mike-Taiwo, made this known in Lagos at the flag-off of the Community Dialogue/Village Square Rally on Ending Violence against Women and Girls.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the exercise was aimed at supporting the Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), funded by Ford Foundation.
Mike-Taiwo said that the group was in the community to build the solidarity, accountability and commitment of the traditional institution, women leaders and market women towards ending gender-based violence.
She said that W-LIT had begun a village square meeting, where the head of the community also pledged to put an end to gender-based violence in the area.
Mike-Taiwo: ”We will also begin dialogue with the youth, the leaders and different stakeholders in the community so that we can have zero tolerance for domestic violence and have a safe community.
”We have also heard from women their domestic violence experiences in their various homes in the past and that is why we always tell them to speak out.”
This has become necessary because when the victims keep silent, they will be encouraging the perpetrators to continue with the act.
The W-LIT president particularly referred to a woman who, she said, narrated how she left her marriage in 1984 due to domestic violence.
She said: ”The woman expressed regret that she did not speak up, and up and till today, one of her eyes cannot see clearly due to the violence she suffered from her husband.”
Mike-Taiwo urged the perpetrators to stop domestic violence against women and girls so that they could have a good community and a better Nigeria.
Speaking, Head of the community, Chief Ganiyu Adaranijo, said that the purpose of the event was to seek an end to violence against women and girls in the area.
Adaranijo, who said that the community was always against husbands beating their wives and vice-versa, said that the community had zero tolerance for the perpetrators of such act.
He said it was also against the law of the country and that of God for father to have sex with his daughter, adding that the community had always been reporting such cases to the police for appropriate action.
Adaranijo also urged parents and guardians in the community to monitor their children, as leaders of tomorrow.
(NAN) (www.nannews.ng)
