Interview With Hauwa Shekarau On Sexual Violence In Nigeria and The VAPPBill

Everyday, someone somewhere is abused. This abuse could be sexual, emotional, physical or psychological.

Unfortunately, these abuses are mostly faced by young people and women.

In Nigeria the report is shocking, especially with the operative socio-cultural African attitude of keeping “private issues private.”

Most of the time, cases of domestic violence, rape, incest & trafficking are not publicly discussed and treated accordingly because of fear of stigmatization. Victims mostly succumb to endure this trauma, day in day out as they do not want other people to consider them unfortunate or weak.

The incessant cases of kidnapping have not helped to diminish this problem. The case of the over 200 missing school girls is still fresh on our mind and it has sparked international protest which is driven by the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls across various social media.

Like the fear of most concerned people, the victims may have been subjected to rape, girl child marriage or other sort of human violence.

But what are the support systems available for such victims?

In the case of rape, many victims often stoop to aborting the baby through unconventional means because of the strict abortion rule in Nigeria. Unwanted pregnancies are often terminated by dangerous quacks as a result of the restrictive abortion law that do not conform to the realities of the present day society.

This has caused the number of maternal mortality rate to shoot up in the country.

A recent statistics released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows that Nigeria is one of the two countries that contributes to 1/3 of the total maternal mortality death globally (the other one is India).

Also, a statistics from Ipas Nigeria states that young people contribute more than half of the 760,000 unsafe abortions taking place annually in Nigeria while up to 10,000 maternal deaths annually in Nigeria due to unsafe abortions.

To address these social imbalance, Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA) and Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) with support from the Department 

For International Development (DFID) amalgamated 9 different Bills to create the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Bill (VAPP Bill) which will help to eradicate violence in the public and private places as well as all sort of sexual and domestic violence.

When passed into law, the VAPP Bill will also reduce to the barest minimum the cases of rape by minor, incest, maternal death and domestic violence. 

The bill is currently awaiting approval of the Senate for it to be passed into law.

In this short audio, Ms Hauwa Shekarau, the National President of Int'l Federation of Women Lawyers, (FIDA) Nigeria and Ipas legal Advisor spoke on the credence of the VAPP Bill and some of the issue it addresses.

You can listen to her via:- https://soundcloud.com/oluwabusayo-sotunde/sexual-violence-in-nigeria-and-the-vappbill