By Zainab Oyekan
Mrs Olivia Dazyem, Chairperson, Plateau Gender and Equal Opportunities Commission, has appealed to religious and women leaders to fight Gender Based Violence (GBV) in the state.
Dazyem made the appeal during a stakeholders meeting with wives of heads of denominations, women leaders, and Muslim women organisations in Jos on Thursday .
The chairperson said that the interface with the women was to make them know that they were critical and strategic stakeholders in changing the narrative of GBV in the state.
She said people have the right to report when their rights were infringed upon and also get justice for it.
“We want to say that perpetrators would be prosecuted and made to face the full wrath of the law,” Dazyem said.
The chairperson said women must be prepared to stand against the culture of silence that would make them shield perpetrators of GBV.
Speaking during the meeting, Mrs Sarah Dalut, Women leader of all Christian denominations, said the meeting was apt and timely.
“To hear that parents are selling their children for money is strange and even give out their girls for prostitution is bad, “ said Dalut.
Dalut said that clearly poverty was the root cause of this problem and the solution was to empower as many women as possible.
Representative of Amirah, Federation of Muslim Women Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN), Plateau chapter, Mrs Simbiatu Sallawu, said that the association would sensitise women against GBV. NAN
