The Honourable Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Pauline Tallen has stressed the need to create awareness and inter-agency collaboration towards ending sexual and gender-based violence in Nigeria. She made the call at amulti-agency consultative meeting on the implementation of Violence AgainstPersons Prohibition Act (VAPP) on Wednesday in Abuja. The Minister who was represented by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Anthonia Akpabio said that data and information sharing amongst stakeholders will help strengthen the sexual offenders register. The Director -General ofThe National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, Imaan Sulaiman said there is an ongoing advocacy to make the agencies voice loud for victims of Sexual and Gender Based Violence to know that they are not alone. Sulaiman who stressed the need to empower vulnerable persons facing one form of violence or another called for support to implement the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act. Restating the readiness of the Police to cooperate with other agencies, the Inspector General of Police represented by AIG Garba Umar said the force has set up a department where cases of Social and Gender Based Violence are handled. He stated that the force is training and retraining officers in the fight against gender violence. The IGP attributed the failure of implementing the Act to weak information sharing among stakeholders. The Controller General,Nigeria Correctional Service Haliru Nababa, represented by ACG Daniel Utaro, said that the service has data of sexual and gender-based violators in prison custody all over the country. He assured NationalAgency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons of the agencies readiness to make available pictures of perpetrators. The Director, Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption program, Priscilla Anukwuru said they were partnering with the European Union and the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons to introduce the sexual offenders register. Although the register has made significant progress, she said more work needs to be done to streamline and have corresponding data by all agencies working to end sexual violence. She said that the Rule ofLaw and Anti-Corruption program supports the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Anti-Human Trafficking Gender unit, Nigeria Police Force Gender Unit and others with equipment to enable them become more efficient. The meeting ended with all stakeholders promising to do more in re-aligning and sharing data across all agencies with a view to ending all forms of Sexual and Gender Based Violence.
