We do not discriminate in naming and shaming sex offenders —Fapohunda, Ekiti AG

November 8th last year, marked your one year in office as the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in Ekiti State for the second time, how would you describe your second journey as Ekiti State AG?

Last year was very eventful. We came into government concerned that many of the programmes that we started during the first term of Governor Kayode Fayemi were not continued, in three broad areas; law reform, institutional development and core issues that affect the delivery of effective service to the government and people of Ekiti State. Coming back, one of the first steps we took was to look at the Ministry of Justice again and see how we can strengthen the capacity of lawyers, to rekindle their faith, in delivering effective justice to the people of the state and it was in furtherance of that that we set up a ministry of justice academy. Also recognising that what we do is as important as where we do it, we began to renovate the Ministry of Justice offices.

Are we there yet? No, we still don’t have the type of work place that we desire and that is why we are grateful that Mr. Governor in his wisdom thought it was appropriate for the Ministry of Justice to have a proper office building that appropriately affirms what we do. That was one of the major achievements of last year, that we will now have a new Ministry of Justice building.

The second area where we have made progress is the area of law reform. We proposed and the state executive council and the house of assembly agreed with us on a couple of laws. The Administration of Civil Justice Law is the first in the country and it was enacted in furtherance to ensure that civil disputes are concluded as quickly as possible. The second law is the Anti-land Grabbing Law, the property protection law, which was becoming a major problem for the government and the people of Ekiti State. The conduct of land grabbers became so rampant that it was beginning to affect all of us, affecting those who want to build their own private buildings, affecting investors coming to the state.

Another law that is worth mentioning is the transition law because Mr. Governor was concerned that given our experience of 2014 till now, many of the project that we started were abandoned, so there was a need to enable a legal and duty framework that within practicable means, seeks to achieve transition from one government to another. Core activities under the law will include; having proper handover notes, ensuring that both the teams from the incoming and the outgoing government meet as frequently as possible to achieve a shared appreciation of the state of the state and of course, we cannot but mention the Gender-Based Violence (GBV) law that was amended.

The government of Ekiti State is known to be fervently against gender-based violence, thus, declaring the state a no-go-area for sex offenders. Can you talk about some of Government’s policies formulated towards fighting this menace?

Our intervention is not just limited to taking steps, to criminalise domestic violence but also to respond to all forms of sexual violence. We have noticed that there was an increasing rate of sexual violence in our communities across the state. We had embarked on public education and advocacy, led by the wife of the governor, Erelu Bisi Fayemi and to sensitise communities across the state on sexual-based violence, but we have noticed that was also not serving its purpose.

So, in addition to public education, in Fayemi’s first term, we established a sex offender’s register which was discarded by the administration after us; we reopened the register, and introduced additional measures. One of the additional measures that we introduced is the naming and shaming, which include publicly putting out pictures of sex offenders, not only on government’s website but also on other social media platforms that deal with these issues.

In addition to that, we took steps to ensure that we name them in public media; we have also adopted issuing advisories to their communities about their status including pasting their posters in prominent places in their local communities. Asides from that, we have taken quite a number of prosecutorial steps. For example, we do not discontinue any rape or any sex offences cases that come before us. Before now, families of victims and the offenders sometime come to an arrangement where they are paid off, we have tried to discourage that and insisting that if the victims do not cooperate with us, we may also prosecute the victim for obstructing justice.

So we have taken those steps, in addition to the fact that the Attorney General provides leadership to all sex offenses prosecutions. We are grateful that the police have also been helpful; the turnaround time in which we receive files and begin to prosecute is now getting faster than before.

Can we do better? Yes, there are still areas that we still need to work on, for example, we cannot just take care of the legal needs of the victims, and there is a need to have additional support, medical and psychological. So we are working on a sexual assault referral center, which can be a one stop clinic for victims of sexual assaults. Hopefully that will be realized this year; we have identified a location in the state’s teaching hospital, we have begun to train our own lawyers, who will be available for the referral centre.

The recent naming and shaming of another sex offender was commended by a lot of Nigerians. However, some people were of the opinion that the naming and shaming was just for non-prominent people, that, if it was a politician or a prominent person that committed that offence, the person won’t be shamed that way, what is your say on this?

Well, maybe they have forgotten that the first person that was named and shamed was an Anglican priest, despite the enormous pressure that was put on the Ministry of Justice that time. So we do not discriminate. If they have any proof of a high-profile person that has been convicted and we have not named and shamed, let them bring it to us now, we will look at it. But we do not discriminate, once the person is convicted, convicted is the keyword, people confuse allegation with conviction; it is not the same thing.

I know a number of people have been saying, but this person and that person is in court, yes; but until we get a conviction, the fundamentals of our law is ‘innocent until proven guilty’, and proving guilty is not by social media. It is by a court of law. So the moment we have a conviction, that is when we deploy the measure of sex offenders’ registry.

The wife of the governor recently suggested that girls who get pregnant while in school should be allowed to go on with their education. Are there going to be laws to this effect; and don’t you think this will encourage sexual immorality among students?

Number one, it presupposes that you think because one girl is pregnant, all other girls will also want to get pregnant. That is a very false premise to build an argument and the fact that my friend smokes does not mean I will smoke. I think the fundamental issue is that something is wrong, when you have at that age, a girl and a boy have a relationship, the girl gets pregnant she leaves school, the boy continues. There is something that is not right. That is the broader picture that many people do not see. It also goes back to how we see the girl child. Why should the girl child have to leave school while the boy continues school, there is something wrong.

It is this patriarchal society that always place the girl as the villain, meanwhile, it takes two to be pregnant.  So the boy that is responsible will now continue school and you say the girl should stop and we do not think something is not right in that. Of course, it is not about laws, it is not compulsion, what we are trying to do – all of us, not just the first lady, is to, number one, within your own community, educate your people about the importance of girl-child education, which is crucial to the development of the community. Most importantly to note that the girl getting pregnant in school should not be the end of her life.

If you look across Ekiti State now, the concern of the wife of the governor is the practical and real life examples of girls that are all around in Ekiti, pregnant, who have dropped out of school, they have no skills, by the time they have the kids and are out of school, they become unemployable, they contribute to our social problems in the state. So, it is more than this pregnancy issue, there is a broad range of issues that are directly connected to those girls coming out of school.

Yes, we need to create much awareness, sex education is crucial, we need to begin to rethink our approaches to these issues. Now, because we have taken this religion issue to another level, many schools don’t like teaching sex education. Sex education is crucial because whether we like it or not, the boys and the girls are exposed to sex education on screen, it is everywhere.  Yes, we have to much more to do in sex education, but in such a case where then it happens, the life of the girls should not stop.

The offenders’ register that started in Ekiti has now become a national thing, how do you feel about this?

We are grateful and it is good we now have a national conversation on the issue. When we started it, we were the lone voice; many people said it can’t work, that it was an American idea that it can’t work in Nigeria. We are happy now that more and more people now see that it can work. It is not just the federal alone, I was reading recently that the Chief Judge of Ogun State has proposed that she thinks the idea of sex offenders register is good as she is concerned about the increase in rape incidents in that state. So more and more states are coming to us asking about the templates, but what is good ultimately is that, Ekiti State will not solve Nigeria’s issue of sexual violence but it is good that we have set the templates and we are happy to share our experience, so it is a positive development.