Mandate Secretary expresses worry over rising cases of GBV in FCT

The Mandate Secretary for Women in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mrs Adedayo Benjamins Laniyi, has expressed worry over the increasing cases of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in the country’s capital, FCT.

She said 10 days ago, the number of reported cases of GBV in the FCT was less than 2,000, but just in the last count on Wednesday 22nd November 2023, the number surged to 2,344 reported case.

Laniyi stated this while speaking with journalists after a meeting with On Air Personalities (OAPs), influencers and some media personalities in FCT ahead of her plans to and activities for a 16 days Activism against Gender Based Violence expected to kick off on 25th November 2023.

She said the FCT Social Development Secretariat on her first day of assumption of work in her assignment, hosted the presentation of the National Dashboard of GBV to Wives of the Royal Fathers in the FCT and wives of Local Government Chairmen and the result was something to worry about.

Laniyi said the FCT wanted to use the National Dashboard to bring the awareness of the underreporting and state of crisis in the communities and six area councils to the wives of the Royal Fathers and Council Chairmen.

“We are a cosmopolitan and as well as a very interesting indigenous community, and in the Palaces of our Royal Fathers they have cases every day, some are so challenging that even how to bring it to the fore for the police to intervene is often challenged.

“So now, the ingenuity of the Department of the FCT Gender Based Violence Focal person was to create this engagement and let them see that this is not good enough, that if we trigger consciousness within you, then as mothers in those communities, you will do something.

“For me, it also became a trigger and a clear dashboard for my own inaugural assignment,” she said.

She, however, said FCT Women, adolescent girls, children and persons with disabilities within the classification of the vulnerable group is a targeted indices fall under her purview for intervention and subvention.