Civil Society Organisations, CSO’s, in Ojo, and Oshodi-Isolo local government areas of Lagos State met separately this week to review their efforts in curbing issues of Sexual and Gender Based Violence, SGBV, in their communities.
The meeting which was held in Ojo and Oshodi-Isolo LGAs on Tuesday, April 26, and Wednesday, April 27, respectively, was the CSOs third quarterly meeting with Women’s Rights and Health Project, WRAHP, managers of Ireti Resource Centre, on how to tackle issues of SGBV cases in the two LGAs.
The meeting comes under the Agents for Citizen-Driven Transportation Project, titled ‘Building capacity of Civil Society Organizations to promote uptake of justice related social services in Ojo and Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Lagos State’
It is a project being funded by the European Union, EU ACT.
A statement signed by Bose Ironsi, Executive Director, WRAHP, and made available to newsmen during the meeting read partly, “In the past six months, we have been working concertedly on how to curtail, if not eradicate entirely, issues of SGBV in Ojo and Oshodi-Isolo LGAs.
“We have been able to build the capacity of 207 community stakeholders to effectively report issues of SGBV in their communities and this can be seen through the increased number of SGBV cases recorded in Ireti Resource Centre and the Idera SAC: there has been about 20 per cent increase in reporting.
“The essence of this project is to promote the uptake of justice related social services in these areas of Lagos State.
“We are well aware that issues of SGBV cases are still rampant in communities in Lagos State, and it is our responsibility to ensure we follow up on our efforts to address the menace.
“We therefore implore the media to join us in our fight in breaking the culture silence.”
During the meeting, the CSOs deliberated on the need to follow-up on the progress towards SGBV case management in their communities.
Ireti Centre Manager, Precious Eberechukwu, who anchored the meeting at Ojo, emphasised on the importance of CSOs to always network, as well as to improve on their internal, external and programmatic capabilities.
Samson Asolo, from Blissful Life of Youth Society of Nigeria, said there are rampant SGBV cases in Ojo, especially in Ajangbadi.
He, however, said that the challenges they face in tackling the menace is the culture of silence and unnecessary interference by some local leaders.
“It’s quite sad that sometimes community leaders who you expect to be championing the fight against SGBV try to frustrate our efforts. There is a case of SGBV we are following up, and a community leader was calling on us to drop the case because he has an interest,” Asolo said,
According to him, to address this kind of interference, more sensitisation of community leaders in Ojo LGA on SGBV is vital.