NGO begins campaign on violence against women in FCT

A non-Governmental Organisation, Complete Women Foundation, has launched a campaign on violence against women and the girl-child in schools and other public places in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

President of the organisation, Mrs. Ireti Ade-Oyinleye, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that the campaign is aimed at eliminating gender violence and abuse.
What we have started is going out; we have this school talk, going out to schools, reaching out to children in schools, going out to religious organisations.

In fact, we even intend to go to market places, we visited orphanages “we will go to’’ as much places as possible where we can reach out to people to create the awareness.
Some of them don’t even know what is going on around them; they need somebody to tell them.
So it is when they are enlightened that they are empowered to be able to do what they ought to do so that they will not just live life careless.
And then we don’t even stop at that we intend reaching out to also parents and care givers so that they too will know what to do

Ade-Oyinleye stated that the organisation has worked closely with other NGOs and relevant government agencies to ensure that it achieves its mandate. She said that the organisation was established to create awareness on issues threatening the well-being and safety of women and girls in FCT.

According to her, the NGO is using group-based interactive programmes to sensitise women to the need for them to refocus their attentions of the right values, culture and character as well as their collective roles in the society.

The president added that the sensitisation would enlighten the women and girls on how they could discover and develop their inherent potentials through capacity building.
She said that effective sex education would go a long way toward redressing abuse in the society.

According to her, the organisation has a link with NGOs and other relevant agencies that have counselling centres where victims of sexual abuse can be taken to.
The essence of referring them to such counselling centres is to encourage them and let them understand that being a victim is not the end of their lives.

With our laudable campaign, we have extended our programme to other states; we want to ensure that we eliminate the issue of sexual abuse and other violence in our society.

We have the presence of the social media so we put whatever we do on media for people to see so that it’s not just limited to Nigerians alone as many that can go online can have access to what we are doing.’’