Rapist of babies, children should be jailed for 50 years – NCWS president

Mrs Gloria Laraba Shoda (mni) is the president of the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS) Nigeria. In this interview, she advocates for 50 years jail term for child molesters, and the challenges a year into her tenure. Excerpts: You have spent one year in office, how has the journey been? It has been both […]

Mrs Gloria Laraba Shoda (mni) is the president of the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS) Nigeria. In this interview, she advocates for 50 years jail term for child molesters, and the challenges a year into her tenure. Excerpts:

You have spent one year in office, how has the journey been?

It has been both challenging and interesting. It is not easy to lead women; it is a difficult task, most especially when you are president of the National Council for Women Societies (NCWS) which has no funds coming from anywhere to run its activities.  

 

How far have you gone in achieving your 10-point agenda, which was in your mission statement when you took over the affairs of the NCWS?

 When we came on board, empowerment was one of our cardinal points, mobilizing women to enhance our data, because we needed to know our numerical strengthen. We are also into mentoring of the younger generation and have adopted a group called, ‘Girls and Cheap’.

We are collaborating with the SDGs to make sure its goal are achieved, we are also into skill acquisition in different states. In Lagos State for instance, the government came up with skill acquisition programmes which the NCWS keyed into and the women graduated and were given certificates.

About 1000 women underwent this training, in different fields like crockery, sewing and beading. Apart from the skill acquisition programmes done by the Federal Government, the NCWS also does training for women in different states. 

We also look at cases of rape and domestic violence against women. In Yobe State, the council adopted a child that was amputated because he was electrocuted, it was a mistake, he was just leaning against the pole, and something happened and his two arms were gone.

We take care of rape victims; a six months old baby is one such cases. The culprit that raped the baby was taken to the police and we are not satisfied with the way the police handled the matter, because in a couple of days the culprit was out.

In Yobe, we have shelter for some of the victims, and also in Taraba State we were able to prosecute and get a police officer sacked. This police officer raped a young girl, and was caught and fortunately the police commissioner there is a disciplined and principled man, so he made sure that the accused officer was charged to court and when found guilty was dismissed from the force.

We have visited the wife of the acting president, and we are keying into her project because she has a shelter for women that are battered, or suffer any kind of harassment. We are also keying into the Future Assured project of her Excellency, Aisha Buhari. We intend to flag off some of these partnerships. Presently we are flagging off an empowerment programme for widows, and street urchins, especially the school dropouts who left because they could not pay their school fees.

Two states have opted to do the empowerment themselves, that is Kebbi and Nasarawa, and the governors’ wives in those states decided to empower about 200 women and children. They opted to take them off the streets, pay their WAEC fees, or enroll those who have never been in school to school. 

We are trying to catch the girl child young, so we have a programme called, ‘Let’s Go Girls’. It’s a sporting programme that catches the children young in whatever kind of sporting activity they like. So when you get those ones that are good in a sport you train them, so that they can excel and have something to do. Onyale and Fashekun are the ones partnering with NCWS to power these projects.

 

What would you say is responsible for the increase in violence against women and children across states?

I would say poverty and lack of employment is partly responsible. Most of these acts of violence are deeply rooted in money rituals. The gruesome acts are all over the social media and the newspapers. When the culprits are caught they say they did it for money rituals. I think it is poverty, and its level is really serious now as people are just doing anything they can to get money to feed their families. 

When I visited the Senate president on one of my advocacy visits, I actually demanded that if anyone is caught defiling babies, young children below the ages of five, they should be sentenced for 50 years. I am aware that Kano State has done something, and some other states have followed suit. Because rape is rampant in Kano State, they have signed into law 15 years imprisonment for anyone caught in the act of rape especially against children. But I feel that sentence should be increased to 50 years.  

You have spent one year in office, tell us of the celebration and your plans afterwards.

We will have a free medical check up on that day; we will also have peace and unity walk, because the country is not peaceful right now, some people are clamoring for all sorts of things, some are being ejected from somewhere, others want their own states. But women are saying that they want peace, we are tired of these problems, we don’t want war, we don’t want emergency widows; because when there is war or unrest, its women that suffer. 

We are going to do a leadership training for them and also a dinner, where we are going to give awards to state presidents, national officers and members of staff that have done very well. It’s going to be low keyed. We intend to build our land and presently we are looking at the applications of different developers. We have approached the FCT for farm lands for our women. We are also partnering with people from the US who want to come to Nigeria, pick children of the IDPs, and train them for six months in different skills, and empower them, but they need land. 

 

We learnt that you will give soft loans, and not long term loans that will effectively empower women?

Yes I discussed with BOI, this set of loan is for the grassroots. The soft loans are not small, some people need only N10,000 to start a business that will grow in the future. I have been approached for N2,000 to start a business during Ramadan, by a lady who wanted to sell oranges. So N10,000 to N50,000 is not small for the grassroots people because if you give more than that they might not know what to do with it.