By Adeola Ogunlade
Over 50 million Christians in Nigeria under the Christian Council of Nigeria in partnership with United Nation’s Children Fund under the European Union and United Nation Spotlight Initiative have concluded plans to kick start a three months campaign toward ending violence against Women and Girls.
The President of Christian Council of Nigeria, Most Rev Benebo Fubara-Manual said this at a press conference announcing the project at his office in Surulere Lagos.
The project tagged: The Role of Faith based organization in Ending Violence against Women and Girls, focusing particularly on the role of the church. It will run from April through June, 2021 in Sokoto, Adamawa, Abuja, Lagos, Ebonyi and Cross River States.
Fubara-Manual said we have realized that violence against women and girls is not what the churches or faith based organizations alone can solve: it calls for multilateral efforts and initiatives and every form of support is a move in the right direction.
He said that we believe that this collaboration will assist many non-religious persons to discern clearly how they have been trapped in the same declining culture and do all that they can to stop this evil.
He said “Jesus, our Saviour and Lord was born of a woman and lived a life here on earth as a child under the care of loving parents but knew in his own childhood experience, the evil of the violence of adults especially that of King Herod.
“Jesus, during his life time adjusted the social role of women in his time, loved then and worked with then in spite of the explosive and sensitive setting in which he ministered. He challenged the stereotypes against women by showing them as reliable witnesses and even used them as the first witnesses to the most crucial event of his resurrection and presented them as worthy of love and care”, he said.
He noted that this example of Jesus stands against every form of marginalization of women and girls today and this is a strong guide to the Christian Council of Nigeria in its pursuit of social justice and its manifestation of the kingdom of God in the world today.
He noted that for us and for UNICEF, this is in furtherance of our previous collective effort between 2017 and 2019 in ending violence against Children with the support of USAID and European Union.
“We are not convinced that the governments of the nations of our world are sufficiently tackling the challenges with respect to violence against Women and Children. The political and social systems are not skewed in the favour of women and girls but rather against them”.
“We shall collectively seek to reject all forms of abuse of women and girls including women’s forced domestication, discrimination in religious, political and social settings, girl child neglect, exploitation, abuse and trafficking, and all shades and colours of violence against women and girls-be they physical, emotional, sexual or psychological”, he said.
Fubara-Manual said further that we name violence against women and girls as a real evil confronting all communities of our country today. We admit that it happens in our homes, institutions, religious organization.
“In these months, we shall expose all forms of it and re-examine the existing policies of all the bodies to which we belong and the policies of our nation with a view to discerning whether or not these policies perpetuate violence against women and girls in any form”.
Fubara-Manual said “we shall engage in the selected focal states and Local Government Areas in street rallies and meet Christian religious leaders who can initiate positive changes in this regard. We shall train vanguards of injustices everywhere we go. We shall hand out fliers and stickers that would send out our messages and pray to our one and only creator and redeemer in our churches so that by the grace of God, we shall see an age in which violence against women and girls”.
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