In commemoration of this year’s “International Youth Day of Service”, the Centre for Justice, Leadership and Innovation has embarked on sensitization of the public on Violence Against Persons Prohibition and Protection law.

The law, signed in 2017, covers a vast area of violence including rape, false rape accusation, abandoning a spouse, forceful isolation of a person from family and cat-calling among others of which many have fallen victim, and perpetrators gone scot-free.

Other aspects are drugging a person for the purpose of having sex, violence affecting a person’s mental and psychological health, as well as maltreating a window and taking over husband’s properties, among others.
The Co-convener of the group, Barrister Chisom Okeke, while frowning that a good number of people are still ignorant of the law, said nearly two hundred persons have been sensitized at Eke Awka Market even as more are targeted in the coming days, when the sensitization will be taken to other markets across the state.

While urging people to join hands in abolishing violence by speaking up against violent practices, Barrister Okeke called on law enforcement agencies and humanitarian organizations to champion the course of ending violence against persons, noting that law enforcement is as important as legislation.

Some traders at Eke Awka Market, including Messrs Solomon-Mary Nwokike, Ekene Chinweokwu, Mrs.Ngozi Nweze and Ogechukwu Nwafor, who explained their different degrees of awareness of violence against Persons Prohibition and Protection law, joined in calling law enforcement agencies to step up actions to discourage all forms of violence against persons.