NOA SEEKS WOMEN SUPPORT IN THE FIGHT AGAINST GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN IMO

Reporter : CHINAZO ILECHUKWU

The National Orientation Agency (NOA) wants women to support the efforts geared towards ensuring the domestication of Violence Against Persons Prohibition act now before the Imo State House of Assembly.

The Director of the Agency in Imo State, Mr. Vitus Ekeocha, gave the charge at a public lecture organized for women at Saint Paul’s Boys’ International School Chaplaincy, Federal Housing Estate Trans Egbu, Owerri.

Mr. Ekeocha said the bill when passed into law would help check all forms of violence, especially against the female folk, which was now on the increase.

He urged mothers to be agent of social change and encouraged them to always expose incidents of rape or incest that had become prevalent in families.

A Director in the Ministry of Women Affairs in Imo State, Dr. Blessing Azubuike, noted that the state had recorded about two hundred cases of rape in the last one year.

She called for a stop to preference often accorded to the male child against the female counterpart by parents.

Dr. Azubuike noted that women should be accorded equal opportunity with the men to ensure equality.

Delivering a lecture with the theme “The Role of Women in Eliminating Discrimination and Gender-Based Violence,” Dr. Caroline Amadi of the National Council for Women Societies called for an end to obnoxious widowhood practices, child marriage, trafficking in persons and female genital mutilation.

She advised mothers to make themselves accessible to their children and ensure sex education of the girl child to check unwanted pregnancy.