The Executive Secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Tony Ojukwu, SAN, on Tuesday revealed that the Commission had developed a short code (6472) for easy access to the Commission and other relevant stakeholders on complaints on human rights violations, especially those bordering on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV).
This is even as he identified poverty and unemployment as the root causes of SGBV.
Ojukwu made the revelation at the High-Level Multi-Agency Task Team (HiMAT) programme for assessing the extent of implementation of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) (VAPP) Act at the NHRC headquarters in Abuja, adding that the code would become operational from April 1, 2022.
According to him, the access code was developed with a view to making it seamless for victims or would-be victims of sexual and gender-based violence to quickly contact the commission by dialling the toll-free code for them to be linked with a particular agency of government or civil society organisation (CSO) with the mandate to deal with such reported violation or abuse.
He, however, used the opportunity to commend the Office of the Vice-President, the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP), and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for collaborating with the Commission towards the realisation of the access code.
Ojukwu informed participants at the HIMAT meeting that NHRC had offices in 36 states of the federation, adding that with those offices working with other service providers, the new code would go a long way to help SGBV complainants and ensure that their complaints were tabled before the appropriate agencies or organisations for necessary actions.
While enumerating several interventions by the Commission aimed at stemming the tide of sexual and gender-based violence and promoting the implementation of the VAPP Act, Ojukwu said such efforts created avenues for awareness creation on the Act.
This, according to him, would benefit several people who were previously not aware of the existence of the VAPP Act.
He informed that the Commission set up a Special Investigation Panel on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in 2019, saying that the panel sat in the six geopolitical zones of the country, heard petitions and empowered deserving persons.
According to Ojukwu, most sexual and gender-based violence cases were caused by poverty and unemployment.
On her part, the Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), Professor Fatimah Waziri Azi, while making a graphic presentation on the current realities on sexual offences in Nigeria, titled, “Update on Nigeria Sexual Offender Database: What Has Changed in the Past Year?”, informed that at present, some states had been linked to Nigeria Sexual Offender Database and urged the remaining states to also link up
According to Azi, the states which had so far linked up to the database were Edo, Ekiti, Adamawa, Kano, Kwara and Delta.
Making a PowerPoint presentation, an Assistant Director at NAPTIP, Mr Titus Amariju, informed that the six states had sent data from their respective states on sexual offences and that two more states, Kaduna and Cross Rivers had also proposed to link up to the Nigeria Sexual Offender Database.
He, however, expressed concerns that despite the fact that 25 states in Nigeria had adopted the VAPP Act, only a few had so far linked up to the Sexual Offender Database, which he noted would provide the information needed to fast track the implementation of the Act.
Credit: Nigerian Tribune