From Femi Mustapha and Divine Macaulay, in Kaduna
The InterFaith Dialogue Forum for Peace (IDFP), in collaboration with UN WOMEN, has called on religious and traditional leaders in Kaduna state to join the fight against cases of Gender Based Violence (GBV) in the state held in Kaduna on Friday.
The Co-chair of the Forum, Rev. John Joseph Hayab, made this call at a one-day engagement forum on the Development and Validation of the SGBV Accountability Framework for Community Faith-Based Actors in Kaduna State as part of its LEAP project.
Hayab said the gathering had brought together selected Christians and Muslim participants engaging each other on issues of interfaith collaboration, nation-building, peaceful coexistence, addressing issues of gender-based violence and climate change as it affects the faith.
He opined that people who go to places of worship are the same people who go to their homes and perpetuate gender-based violence, so faith leaders must speak against it and teach about it in churches and mosques.
According to him, among many violence unleashed on women, the one that troubles him is the scenario where women spend time and resources to get educated, only to be bullied by their husbands as he forbids them to work or pursue a career in their field.
“Let’s take for instance, the man has money, probably your wife is a lawyer and graduated at an early age and when she’s fifty years old, the man dies and leaves the woman with many
responsibilities and helpless with no way to take care of the family, this woman goes back to square one because she’s inexperienced and cannot practice fending for the home.
“Sometimes people limit violence to hitting a woman, but other things are being done to women that are dangerous and can destroy them emotionally and physiologically. There is a need for faith leaders to teach men to give women the opportunity to contribute their quarter to society.
“If your wife has been trained, allow her to work; it will help her tomorrow, and she will have what to tell your children and grandchildren, but when you deny her such opportunity, she has no experience nor the knowledge needed to survive.
” As a man, you may be alive and strong now, but a time will come when you will no longer have the strength to do certain things, and then your wife’s intellectual ability becomes useful for obvious reasons.
Drawing inspiration from the book of Psalms 114 vs. 12, Rev. Hayab explained how the scripture described daughters like pillars in the house, noting that they are strong and unbreakable when trained; hence, they should be allowed to use their God-giving gifts to serve humanity.
“My advice to people is, let nobody hide under culture or faith to perpetuate evil against a woman. A woman is created by God; when God blessed us with children, he didn’t differentiate between a man and a woman; God made us all special. Let’s equate them with the same treatment, though; women’s needs are more sensitive than those of men.
“Educating a woman is very important all over the world, support your girl child so she can confidently have a voice in the society. As the saying goes, when you educate a woman, you educate a nation,” he said.
Similarly, the Co-Project Director of UN Women on Gender-Based Violence in Nigeria, Imam Shefiu Abdulkareem Majemu disclosed a UN Women report stating that, 43 percent of cases of early child and forced marriage have been recorded while 23 million girls and women married as children hence, the need to develop and validate a comprehensive compendium for Faith-Based Actors on Prevention of SGBV in the society.
According to him, an accountability framework will give credence and expose how faith community leaders and other people working in the field are doing great work to develop an accountability framework to ensure people have the liberty to report any case of gender-based violence in Nigeria.
He explained that participants would be using their content to develop tools that would allow them to track gender base cases and also pursue a logical conclusion until perpetrators are brought to the book.
“The project is also about social change norms, whereby you change people’s mindset; there are people that have used religion to profile women and girls as not important, and this is why we need to change those values to a better one in regard to the true message of religion on GVB.
“People often think that Gender Violence only affects females but the truth is, the male gender is affected as well, that is why we are working on this area to ensure that some of the boys who have been victims of abuse are helped and I encourage these advocates to judiciously use whatever knowledge, tool or material they acquire at this training to reduce violence in the society,” he said.
