Nigerians have been encouraged to join hands in order to eliminate violence against women and girls in the country.
The Director of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) in Oyo State, Mr Kayode Odedokun stated this during the International Day of Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls organised by the Family Support Initiative (FASI) at JSAY Building, Ibadan.
He said government at all levels need to accommodate women so as to record developmental progress.
He said this year’s campaign, ‘Unite! Activism to End Violence against Women and Girls’, is aimed at mobilising society to become activists for the prevention of violence against women, and to stand in solidarity with women’s rights.
“As far as the elimination of violence against women is concerned, and our strides are seriously in tandem with the vision of the sustainable development goals, then we must make continuous public sensitization on this crucial issue a priority.
“The topic for discussion at this juncture is very apt and timely, especially as the nation is clamouring for social inclusion and rapid development, using gender equality as its bedrock.
“Attaining an egalitarian society of our dreams will just be mere wishful thinking when social stratification is sharply gendering biased. There is no gainsaying that customs and traditions have not been kind to womenfolk across the globe.
“Ours is no doubt a social order that is more badly affected by long centuries of parochial sentiment against women’s emancipation. And one of such reasons advanced for the wrong belief system is that female folk are fragile, and on that basis should be treated as inferior to their male counterpart, the NOA boss said.
In her remarks, the organiser of the programme and the state coordinator for Family Support Initiative, Oyo State chapter, Mrs Adebobola Agbeja, encouraged women to stay off violence saying, “Irrespective of our gender, violence is not an option, not our friend and we are not preaching it.
“As we are preaching violence against women, so also we should also preach violence against men; we are not encouraging our women to go into violence against men and this day is to raise the bar to sensitise the public.
“As women, we have to live a life free from rape, from violence, from female gender mutilation, early child marriage and other vices and that is the message we are sending out as we celebrate and commemorate it here in Oyo State.
“The same programme is being celebrated all over the world because this is a date set aside by the United Nations,” Mrs Agbeja said.
Also, the chairperson of the programme, Dr Olajumoke Akere, said women are fragile but strong, just as she noted that women multi-task “They [women] are achieving so much in our communities, so, indeed, they are not fragile.”
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