The Safeguarding Commission Mission-Nigeria (SACOM-NIG), also known as the Catholic Women Religious group, has called for new strategies to combat the rising sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls in the country.
They made the call at a three-day formation/training in Abuja.
Speaking on the sidelines, the Coordinator of the conference, Sister Paulina Chioma Ogbonnaya, who is also a Dominican Sister of St. Catherine of Siena, serving at the General Council in Rome, Italy, said it is important for everyone to see the negative impact of abuse as of a national concern.
“Safe-guiding is all about caring, making efforts to protect and prevent all forms of abuses. It is wrong to think that the only abuse we suffer is sexual, but there are other forms of abuses and the main issue about abuse comes from power, to exercise power over others,” she said.
Sister Ogbonnaya said the programme was organized for those at the provincials and Area Presidents of various areas of women religious in Nigeria and that the end product is for them to return and teach what they learnt in their various dioceses or areas of religious women.
“That will afford them to be able to reach out to more sisters because these are just a handful of them. For instance, in the diocese of Abuja we have over a 100 sisters. So the people from Abuja provincial area will be able to plan this program only for sisters within the Abuja Ecclesiastical Province,” she said.
She also said that part of the factor responsible for the high rate of abuse is human fear and sometimes, ignorance and can also be related to culture especially in Africa.
Also, Sister Patricia Oguejiofor, of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles, Lagos Province, Abeokuta Diocese, said she would disseminate what she learnt.
“My general advice is to eliminate fear and talk about it. Most of the time this goes on in different strata of human living, but people are so scared to even talk about it. At times money is even involved. And when money is involved and people are afraid to let the money go, then they are not willing and ready to talk about it.
“That is why it keeps going, going and going. I want to even believe, that some of us may have experienced that, but that fear keeps making us to keep quiet where we will talk, where we will talk to somebody who can help us,” she said.
