Women Rights activist, Mrs Martha Daniels has commended the Gombe State House of Assembly for passing the long-awaited Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act.
Mrs Daniels, who is the Executive Director of Advocacy for Children’s Rights Initiative, says with the passage of the law, there will be justice for the oppressed as well as for Children who are violated or abused in the state.
She said raped survivors and those subjected to any form of abuse or violence against them now have hope of getting justice.
“The Violence against Persons Prohibition Act is not just a law that protects women, it protects every human being. And that is why when you go to the definition of rape in the Violence against Person Prohibition Law, it is expanded, as against what you find in the penal code or any other law, it is expanded to even accommodate men and children, even boys because boys are being abused nowadays. So, it gives us a ray of hope, real hope to see that this law is domesticated in the state,” Mrs Daniels said.
Summary of the law
Summarising the VAPP Law, Mrs Daniels said; ”the law is unique, because it has expanded the scope of offences, which now covers other areas aside from rape, such as forced isolation from friends, forced financial dependence or economic abuse, intimidation, stalking, political offences as well as emotional, verbal and psychological abuse and abandonment.”
“It takes care of abandonment, which is very common for us in the North. You know, some men will marry and the next thing they abandon their family for years, and the woman is there fending for the family and the children. It’s quite enormous. Before, intimidation was not an offence, but now when you intimidate somebody and that person feels harmed or threatened, or insecure, it’s also an offence. Spousal battery, substance attack, we had incidences where acid was poured on women, or women pouring acid or boiled water provides for that,” Mrs Daniels said.
According to her, the law provides protection order for the survivors of abuse and gives room for the survivor to be taken out of the centre of violence and be protected.
Other areas that the Violence against Persons Prohibition Act covers is incest, and administering substances with the intent of causing harm, which will further empower the judiciary, lawyers and relevant authorities to seek justice for survivors of abuse.
“It will arm the State Ministry of Women Affairs, it will arm activists like us because I can go forward now based on these and I can even reach out, I can report a case on forceful ejection and frustrating investigation, which is very common because of the culture of silence we have in the North,” Mrs Daniels said.
She said; ”the VAPP Law protects children subjected to child labour, which falls under the section on abandonment, where young children are sent to work in other people’s homes as domestic workers and paid a meagre sum for their labour..It is a form of violence on a general note. So, having communities do that, they are violating the rights of the children and we can come to them with this law. This law can hunt them to stop what they are doing. The law does not provide that children should work. It discourages child labour. So, this law has also armed, even the journalists.”
She called on the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, to increase monitoring, by raising their voice, and profiling of children in the state.
Mrs Daniels said; “I had a case I think a year back at the Federal Low Cost, where I saw a child wandering, and when you ask, she’ll say, I am from Southern Gombe, around Filiya axis. And these underage children, NAPTIP has a lot of profiling to do. I advise them to do a lot of investigations like we did in the case of Barema that they go underground to do investigations like this and keep their eyes open to issues.”
She commended the Gombe State Governor, Muhammadu Yahaya for his efforts in ensuring that the bill was passed into law, appealing to the Governor to assent to the act.
Mrs Daniels also appealed to the public in Gombe State to support the government and ensure that perpetrators of gender-based violence were not protected, but made to face the full wrath of the law.
The Activist said the bill had witnessed some setbacks, where stakeholders in the state perceived the law as the importation of an alien way of life on them, but that with advocacy and enlightenment, they were able to understand the law and its benefit to the society and given their support for its enactment.
She said; “They believe that it’s an imported law, and we are trying to enforce something foreign, on the people. Again they believe that the punishment is beyond what is human, we are tampering with nature and the act of God, like the initial law of castration for rape and cutting of the tubes where the woman is found wanting. Most of our traditional and religious leaders did not have access to the law. They did not know the content of the law, so they felt it was something alien we were bringing to force on the people. However, after the intervention by Ipas, and following what has been done in the past and by the UNFPA and EVA supported to undertake the project.”
