An International rights organisation, Global Rights has said that in Nigeria, the North West has the highest number of mass atrocities, a situation they described as unfortunate and unacceptable.
The Programme Manager of Global Rights, Edosa Oviawe while speaking with journalists during a North West Regional Conference on Women Peace and Security with the theme ‘Promoting Best Practices for inclusive Security and Peacebuilding Processes in North West Nigeria’, said North West used to be at the bottom but sudden found itself on the top.
He said Global Rights has been tracking incidents of mass atrocities across the different regions in the country.
Global Rights is a governance and human rights capacity-building organization, we have been working in Nigeria for 25 years and 45 years globally.
“Global Rights have been tracking incidents of mass atrocities across the different regions in the country, and we realized that in the last 10 years, incidents of mass atrocities in the North West have actually spiked.
“North West which used to be at the bottom in ranking in terms of incidents of mass atrocities has suddenly been at the top in the last decade and this is not far from the metallising issues of insecurity that we are having across the country including banditry.
“So, we have thought how do we begin to get community to ownership of their own security, how do we build their capacity, how do we get everybody in the region to work together, and that is what gave birth to the idea of the project we started last year, which is majorly looking at how do we rethink the security approach we are having in the region,” he said.
Oviawe said at first, they recognised the fact that the country is not playing the key role it should be playing in terms of peacebuilding and security, and we thought they could bring in women to play critical roles in the efforts going on in the region, and that is what gave the idea of the intervention.
He said what they are doing basically is bringing the stakeholders and the partners in the region to come and look at what Global Rights have done in the last year, look at the strategies and the success stories, and begin to think how they are going to build on the gains that Global Rights have made in last one year.
“In the last one year, there has been a reduction in terms of these attacks and insecurity issues in these communities we are intervening in the North West region, we are going to see how we can build on these gains and possibly escalate it to other communities across the region and across Nigeria,” he stated.
In her welcome address, the Executive Director of Global Rights, Abiodun Baiyewu said women in Nigeria are disenfranchised from the peacebuilding process despite being one of the major victims of the crisis in the country.”
“As an all peace-building processes, resolution 3.5 reminds us of the importance of women in peacebuilding, as a matter of fact, half population of Nigeria’s population is women, but half population of Nigeria is disenfranchised from peacebuilding processes and that begins to inform why we thought that this intervention was necessary.
“Women and children are largely most impacted by the crisis of insecurity and Nigeria is a largely insecure place”, she noted.
Alhaji Sani Umar, District head of Gagi in Sokoto, who represented the Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Sa’adu Abubakar, said the Sultan is very excited about choosing Sokoto and the North West states to benefit from the training of women to improve their well-being as well as engagement into the decision making.
“The choice of the states in the North West precisely is timely, and he commends the funders including British High Commission, Global Rights, Kukah Centre and all other partners implementing the initiative in empowering women in the decision making.
“Women constitute 50 per cent of the population of Nigeria, it is high time we decide on inclusion because it is very important. The women need to be empowered so that they can have the voice to represent the women themselves,” he noted.
