The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said it received over 1.7 million cases cutting across 14 thematic areas out of which over 900,000 were on women and children.
The Executive Secretary of the Commission, Tony Ojukwu, who made this disclosure in Abuja while speaking at a Round Table discussion on the current state of affairs of the pending cases of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in Nigeria, said, out of above total, 158,517 cases were on SGBV.
Ojukwu who was represented at the occasion by the Director of Women and Children in the NHRC, Mr Harry Obe, said, it is in a bid to achieve a coordinated response to the critical issues of SGBV that the NHRC, was in collaboration with Roost Foundation on the current state of affairs of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence cases in Nigeria.
The NHRC boss said the collaboration will identify grey areas and proffer solutions to the problem of SGBV just as he noted that since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, with its attendant dire human rights consequences, the Commission has never relented in its quest for solutions in partnership with well-meaning stakeholders.
He used the occasion to outline some of the Commission’s key intervention activities including the launch of the UNSUB Platform for ease of making complaints, the establishment of automated call centre with a toll-free line and a short code number for making SGBV related complaints.
“Setting up of a Presidential Panel of Investigations on SGBV and development of a Manual on integrating Female Genital Mutilation indicators into the Reporting Mechanism for human rights monitors to capture data and also the improvement in the quality report, are also among the Commission’s interventions towards addressing the issue,” he said.
Others include but are not limited to the devotion of 16 days of activism 2020 on awareness in 36 states on Rape and SGBV, hosting of TV programme on the State of Human Rights/SGBV, training and retraining of staff on Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Act and other related laws and policies of SGBV.
In her remarks, the Executive Chairman, Roost Foundation, Dame Julie Oka-Donli said there has been an unprecedented rise in cases of domestic violence, sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual assault and harmful practices against men and women in the recent past.
According to the former Director-General of the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), young girls have been raped and brutally murdered in worship centres, at homes, in public places, etc and young boys have been sodomised in schools and even by religious leaders and family members.
She chronicled some of the pending cases of SGBV in the country including the case of a 35-year-old lady who was burned in Ebonyi for daring to ask for her right to inheritance, Silvester Oromoni, the notorious case of Anambra widow who was allegedly stripped naked by some persons, defilement of a 4-year-old school girl and rape to death of Ogbanje Ochanya some years ago among other undecided SGBV cases in the country.
In her contribution, the President of FIDA, Mrs Amina Agbaje, harped on the imperatives of pro-bono legal services in tackling issues of SGBV saying that every stakeholder is called to support FIDA and Legal Aids Council of Nigeria (LACoN) to sustain their pro-pono legal services to indigent members of the society, including women and children who cannot afford such services.
She stated that non-lawyers could be part of the pro-bono services by donating funds and sponsoring other lawyers to take up pro-bono cases involving SGBV saying that the work is so huge to be left for only one agency like the LACoN.
 said it received over 1.7 million cases cutting across 14 thematic areas out of which over 900,000 were on women and children.){kind=link}