Advocacy
Abuja, June 21, 2018 (NAN) Devatop Centre for African Development, an NGO which promotes advocacy against gender-based violence, has identified sports as a veritable tool for creating awareness to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
In its 2018 annual Red Card2FGM sports competition held on Thursday at the Junior Secondary School, Wuse, Abuja, the organisation said FGM was an abuse of girls’ and women’s rights.
The Executive Director of the organisation, Joseph Osuigwe, said champions of FGM were committing a crime against the Nigerian government as the act had been prohibited by law.
“Female Genital Mutilation is actually a human rights abuse and that’s why we are addressing it from a human rights perspective.
“FGM has been prohibited by the Nigerian government, so, whoever is involved in it is committing a crime against the Nigerian government,” he noted.
Osuigwe lamented that Nigeria has been identified as one of the major countries where FGM practices were entrenched.
“According to the United Nations, there are about 200 million women and girls affected by FGM globally and Nigeria is responsible for not less than 20 million of that number.
“It is a big concern to us and there is the need for more people to get involved in awareness and advocacy against FGM,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the World Health Organisation (WHO) defines FGM as “all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”.
The Executive Director further explained why his organisation decided to utilise the potency of sports to involve young people in the advocacy against FGM.
“We are using sports to tackle the issue of FGM as an effective but fun way of creating awareness and getting school boys and girls involved.
“We are doing this so that when these girls become adults they can avoid the pitfalls of the past,” he said.
He also promised that the organisation would continue to work with state Houses of Assembly to ensure the domestication of relevant national and international laws which prohibit FGM.
Osuigwe, however, said that some challenges were faced in putting an end to FGM, especially in the area of inimical cultural beliefs.
“The most import challenge we face in creating awareness to end FGM is the myth around the practice.
“People have a misconstrued cultural belief that once a young lady is not cut, she would become a promiscuous adult. But we are using social change communication to challenge that mind-set.
“We present our argument not by condemning the practice but by pointing out the dangers of the practice,” he said.
NAN reports that 10 schools within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) participated in various games at the event, including relay race, sack race, javelin, blind bottle and wrestling.
Goodwill messages were also delivered by representatives of the FCT Universal Basic Education Board, FCT Secondary Education Board and the National Youth Council of Nigeria.
Some of the guests who delivered messages called on government at all levels to follow up on the legal frameworks prohibiting FGM with funding of advocacy and awareness campaigns. (NAN)
KIA/DE/PDE
(Edited by Dorcas Jonah/Peter Ejiofor)