A Kano based non-governmental organization, Smile Mission Health Care (SMHC) has partnered with the state police command to address the menace of drug and substance abuse, as well as sexual violence.
The two related crimes have been identified as the major developmental concerns threatening the state and thus require stronger synergies cutting across various social institutions to be able to overcome them.
A delegation of the NGO, while on advocacy visit last week to the state Commissioner of Police, Mohmmed Wakili, emphasised the need for pragmatic approach to the issues beyond mere rhetoric by all stakeholders.
The Chief Executive Officer, Smile Mission Healthcare, Dr Abba Saleh, drew a relationship between drug abuse and sexual violence, urging the police command to step-up its campaigns against drug abuse.
He stressed that by so doing other criminal tendencies including sexual violence would be mitigated in the state.
Saleh who led the SMHC delegation to the CP’s office disclosed that over 1,119 cases of sexual abuse were recorded in the state last year involving minors as young as 2-year-old as against the 446 cases recorded by WARAKA centre in 2017.
He identified cultural barriers preventing victims of sexual abuse from reporting the cases to appropriate authorities as the logjam in the campaign against the crime.
Also, he urged parents and other caregivers to always open up in event of sexual violence so as that justice could be fought for them by relevant stakeholders.
“According to the data obtained by WARAKA centre, in 2017 when the centre kicked started, 446 cases of sexual abuse were recorded. In 2018, 1119 cases were also recorded. The above figure is alarming because sexual violence is among the least reported violence even in developed world talk more of Nigeria where there is huge socio-cultural barriers as well as poor policies curtailing the vices.
“While in the centre yesterday, within my first 30 minutes a 2-year-old child was brought few hours after defilement. These things are real and needed proactive measures, our laws are obviously obsolete as regards to such offences
“Sexual violence might be related to drugs, recording over 1000 cases is very discouraging and it is one of the crimes that is not even reported, people don’t report issues of sexual violence because of stigmatization, socio-cultural issues and a lot of things and many of them could not access some kind of support after becoming the victim, you see children boys and girls being molested, being defiled and at long last you see they are just hopeless because they are from low socio-economic background these are the narratives we want to change” he added.
Responding, CP Wakili described the menace of drug abuse as a time bomb, calling for more synergies cutting across various institutions in the society to be able to contain it.
“If you take the one who abuse the drug actually he is a victim, he is not the problem the problem is he who supplies it to him because he that supplies it to him does so for more often than not economic gains. I have been arresting them, but I say that’s not the solution, there must be a solution to this problem. If the cause is not address you can’t solve that problem.
“For us to have meaningful solution we need more than these arrests, jail, After arrest so what, you take them to court, after that you sent them to prison for one or two months or years, they will come out, what happens, may be they go back more trained. So we are having a very big social problem of which this thing is more than Singham, it is more than Smile, we need more than synergy, the governments must be involved,” he said.
