Odinkalu: GBV Not Problem of Poor People Alone, Female Judges, DepGov, Others, Too

BasseyInyang in Calabar

A Professor of Human Rights Law and one-time Chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, has disclosed that Gender Based Violence (GBV) is not a problem of the poor people alone, some highly placed Nigerian women have also been destroyed as a result.

Odinkalu said the categories of women destroy by GBV, most times, by their spouses included female deputy governors, high court judges, professors in the academia, commissioners, and a host of others.

Odinkalu was the keynote speaker at a recent one day Access to Justice Summit held at Metropolitan Hotel, Calabar, with the theme, “Advancing Access to Justice for Gender-Based Violence Survivors in Rural Communities through the Customary Court System.”

He said, “Some of the people most destroyed by GBV are the most highly placed women in our society. We think GBV is something that happens to poor women, poor women who go to the rural streams. No.

“It happens to commissioners, female deputy governors, professors, high court judges; and their own is worse because they don’t have anywhere to go. I am not saying it happens because I was told. It happens because I have worked on such cases.

“So we have got to break down certain ideas we have about GBV or the kind of people it happens to in order to know the need to addressing it.”

Odinkalu said for the fight against GBV to succeed, the boundaries between the urban and rural area should be removed so as to tackle the scourge holistically.

He said what was equally disturbing was the fact that the cases of the highly placed women who suffered GBV was hardly heard because their cases did not come to public knowledge, and were hardly believed by those who might be in the position to help them.

Odinkalu stated “When you look at the urban areas, you will find out that  in many cases many of the victims in the urban areas are worse off than those in the rural areas.

“In the rural areas, you cannot be beating someone, and assaulting without another person intervening, but in the urban areas someone can be engaging in GBV and could just walk by and say after all, it is not by business.”