By Kenneth Obieh
The Chairman of the Delta State CARES Steering Committee and Commissioner for Economic Planning, Mr. Sonny Ekedayen, has called for more attention on issues relating to gender based violence.
The chairman stated this at the opening ceremony of a three-day zonal step down training programme, organised by Federal CARES Support Unit in Asaba.
Ekedayen said so many persons had been deprived of their rights and privileges, not because of their qualifications or competence, but their genders.
He enjoined stakeholders to pay more and serious attention to issues relating to Gender Based Violence (GBV), adding that it had led to sexual exploitation, abuse and harrassment across the nation, requiring collaborations among relevant stakeholders to kick against it.
The National Coordinator of the Nigeria CARES programme, Dr. Obaje Abdulkarim, represented by Dr. Mrs Uju Nwose, revealed that the step down training programme was aimed at ‘Training the Trainee’ (TOT) in five states across the in the country.
He listed the states to include Bauchi, Ondo, Kogi, Delta and the Feferal Capital Territory (FCT).
Dr. Nwose expoused that the 40 percent affirmative action in the programme implementation was not a choice, but mandatory, saying the international best practise on GBV in relation to the World Bank guidelines to build the capacity of the officers to deliver quality gender based result was being applied.
She said GBV had been associated with negativity, discriminatory and stereotype traditional issues by limiting or depriving personal and political opportunities of an individual or group of persons in favour of another because of gender.
The Secretary of the Delta CARES Steering Committee and Coordinator of Delta CARES programme, Lady (Dr.) Patience Ogbewe, opined that the time for the capacity building for NG- staff, who were always on the field to deal with the challenges, was apt to enhance their skills in learning new techniques on how to curtail a lot of the challenges at the various communities where they engaged the vulnerable on gender based issues.
Lady Ogbewe also disclosed that the capacity building coincide with 16-day activism against GVB as a global call for more collaboration from everybody to support the movement against restiveness, inequality and other vices that could lead to violence in the society.
Delta State is hosting 9 States which include; Imo, Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Cross Rivers, Ebonyi, Abia, Enugu and Delta State the host.