Audio Attached
NAN-HG-6
Violence
By Grace Alegba
Lagos, Sept. 22, 2016 (NAN) The Nigerian Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) has urged communities to foster child victims of domestic violence and rejection.
The National Chairperson of NAWOJ, Mrs Ifeyinwa Omowole made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Thursday.
She said that such children needed care and love to recover from their traumatic experiences.
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“A man kills his wife; he goes to jail. Who looks after the children?
“The children suffer; so, when we look at the ripple effect of this on our children, on the future generation of Nigeria.
“In those days, the community used to cushion a lot things.
“Can we go back to those days when we were a community?
“We could cushion the effects of everything with each other.
“As neighbours, do we have neighbourhood meetings that will help us cushion effects of things.
“Are there things we can do as smaller units in the communities to help each other come through certain challenges so that it does not result in our killing ourselves?
“My husband offends me, (but) do I have a group in my church or mosque that I can talk to and then I get a kind of therapy?
“Or are you afraid of talking and because you are afraid of talking, you bottle in some of your challenges and then they come out as anger and then you take a life?
“Justice is one thing and justice is relative.
“Who is the real victim?
“The real victims are the children and NAWOJ is talking about how we can begin to foster children that are abandoned or have come out of these violent situations.’’
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Every year, an estimated 3.3 million children are exposed to domestic violence in their homes in third world countries such as Philippines and Nigeria.
As a result, a sizeable number of such child victims are orphaned by incidence of domestic violence. (NAN)
GA/ERO/OSA/YEE
Edited by Emmanuel Okara/Shittu Obassa/Emmanuel Yashim
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