Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State yesterday urged residents of the state to speak out against sexual and domestic violence.
Speaking when he received the Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team at the Lagos House, Alausa, Ikeja, the governor said to speak out is the first step against perpetrators of these acts. He gave assurance that his administration would defend the vulnerable in society.
He said the state government was ready to protect the identities of volunteers on cases of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
“We just want to appeal to all Lagosians, they should not be afraid to speak out, we have our dedicated lines and we also know that we are going to give resources out, at any point in time they should be ready to speak freely to us. We will protect the identities of everyone and the fact is that we should be the first point of call before we know the particular police station that we want our cases to go to”, he said.
He expressed concern on the frequent cases of rape and domestic violence, and promised to put in place an institutional framework that would make the Domestic Violence Law 2007 viable. He said he would stop at nothing to protect the interests of women and children in the state.
“One of my cardinal programmes in the course of the campaign was that I was going to stand up for everyone and standing up for everyone is actually standing up for women and children. These groups in our society are more or less vulnerable and the weakest part of the chain in the society. So, we need an institutional framework, we also need to create institutions that can stand up and support them.
“The society has always been very uncharitable towards issues that relate to children and women. In 2007, we did pass a law on domestic violence. But again beyond that, the law cannot work by itself except we create the framework that enforces our laws, that is what we are standing for and in that respect, we talked about issues that relate to sexual and gender violence”, he said.
The governor charged the team to devise strategies to arrest the trend, assuring that his administration would give them adequate support.