The African Centre for Leadership Strategy and Development (Centre LSD) Monday convened a meeting of traditional and faith leaders, NAPTIP and other stakeholders in the fight on violence against gender in Kano and Benue states, respectively.
It includes fight against rape, sexual abuse, and harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation.
Speaking at a two-day ‘Grant Inception Meeting on the Side by Side Movement for Gender Justice Scale Up Project’, with stakeholders in Abuja, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) zonal commander, North Central Zone, Gloria Bai, said the agency’s firm stance is against any form of gender-based violence and called on stakeholders for stronger collaboration to end the menace.
Earlier, the executive director, Centre LSD, Mr. Monday Osasah, said the lack of strategic leadership has hindered efforts to tackle gender injustice. He added that there was the need for intervention in the Benue and Kano regions, due to their low ranking on the humanity index.
“The reason why we are implementing the side by side project in Benue and Kano states respectively is because of a global index also known as the humanity index, which pointed clearly that Kano and Benue are in the red in terms of gender base violence and if those places are in red, the rational thing to do is to begin to put program in place to see how these menace can be altered.
“And of course you know that, whenever you are talking about gender based violence, you’re talking about the both sexes but this time, the focus is more on women particularly the girl child and so everyone has to team up, using the whole society approach and in doing that, we have different people from different regions of Nigeria coming together to reason and discuss a way out,” he added.
