Faith, culture leaders must correct perception inflicting violence against women, girls- Justice Fati Abubakar

By Muhammad Muhammad

Wife of the former head of state, General Abdulsalam Abubakar, Justice Fati Lamin Abubakar (RTD) on Tuesday challenged religious and cultural leaders to lead new conversation to correct perception that justifying violence against women and girls in the country.

Justice Fati, worried over the prevailing victimization and stigmatization against female gender over a perceived violence of social norms erroneously aligned to religious and cultural tendencies.

The former first lady raised the concern in Kano at a one day National Dialogue with inter-faith and culture leaders towards addressing the prevalence of violence against women and girls organized by Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative WRAPA in collaboration with Bayero university, Kano Centre for Islamic Civilization and Interfaith Dialogue CICID.

Justice Fati Lamin Abubakar, who is the founder and Chairman WRAPA board of trustees, wants the stakeholders to use their moral and spiritual appeal to galvanize “practical social accountability measures” to check the menace.

Addressing the workshop virtually, Justice Fati, believed it is high time stakeholders moved from rhetorics to action to demonstrate zero tolerance to violence against Women and girls in the country.

While lamenting against the culture of silence by survivors of molestation because of societal abuse, Justice Fati believed stakeholders could help mitigate the menace by encouraging victims to speak out and access justice.

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“Religious and Traditional Leaders and Institutions are deeply rooted at all social levels in all communities. They command respect, trust and loyalty enabling them to exercise acceptable albeit limited sanctions for social deviation by members in their domains or congregations.

” It is hope that the dialogue will provide an avenue for sincere conversations to correct perceptions and mis-representations that allow narratives justifying some forms of violence against women and girls in different social settings”. Justice Fati noted.

Former Director, Bayero university Kano Centre for Gender Studies, Professor Aisha Ismail who drew the nexus between social norms and violence against women and girls VAWG insisted the faith and culture based leaders must chart a reformed norms to change public perceptions.

In her presentation ” The Intersection of social norms and VAWG, identification/characterization and evaluation of VAWG in homes and communities; Professor Ismail spelt out the roles of various stakeholders including government, communities to transform and gender sensitive norms in the society.

The university don, tasked ministry of Justice to initiate gender equitable reform and laws that support protection of women and girls. She insisted that government must ensure prompt prosecution and speedy justice against perpetrators of violence against women and girls in Nigeria.

In their separate submission, representatives of Islamic and Christian religions as well as culture, agreed that no practices or principles rooted from scriptures and the traditional values support violence against women and girls.

The religious and culture stakeholders who equally worried over the prevalence of unfriendly norms mitigating the right and liberty of women and girls in the society however attributed the anomalies to strange attitudinal change of young generation. They equally blamed the increasing levels of violation to lack of enforcement mechanism and adequate sanction against violators.