The National Orientation Agency (NOA) has called on Nigerians to join hands in the fight against Gender Base Violence (GBV) to make the society a better place for living.
Director General NOA, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu made the call on Thursday at the agency’s office in Lokoja during a town hall meeting on 16 days activism programme against Gender Base Violence (GBV) organized by the agency.
Issa-Onilu who was represented by the acting state director NOA, Kogi state directorate Patrick Edogbanya at the meeting, said the GBV has become a menace affecting the society, noting that effort should be geared toward eliminating any form of violence against women and children.
“When a woman is being violated the society remain unstable and NOA will continue to do its best to end gender base violence through the collaboration of traditional rulers, religious leaders and other critical stakeholders”
In his remark, the Kogi State police commissioner Betrand Onoha, said the fight against Gender Base Violence should be a collective fight as it affects the entire society.
He lamented that violence against children or minors that are taboo in the olden days has become a norm these days, stressing the need for proactive approach to critically addressed the menace of Gender Base Violence.
The Commissioner of Police however urged NOA to put more effort in taking the sensitization to various level of education in order to imbibe value re-orientation in the minds of the younger ones in the society.
“The traditional rulers and religious leaders have significant roles to play in ensuring that the causes of GBV are nip in the bod by exposing perpetrators of violence against women and children. There is need also for us to back to value reorientation from the grassroots to teach our children the do and don’t in the society” he stated.
In her lecture titled “Harmful belief that perpetrate violence on women and children” Agunsoye Edisha Grace from Challenge parenthood Initiative (CPI), appealed to the government to allow laws concerning women and children violations to take its course by prosecuting offenders to serve as deterrent to others.
