Anti-Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) campaigners have every reason to celebrate as about 140 communities in Osun State, southwest Nigeria, have renounced the age-long practice.
The Osun communities, which described the practice as harmful and sinful to womenfolk, announced their commitment during a three-day public declaration.
Development Diaries gathered that the communities were drawn from three local government areas – Ola-Oluwa, Ife-Central, and Ifelodun.
About 19.9 million girls have experienced FGM in Nigeria, according to a 2020 report by the United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF), UN Women, and Plan International.
Africa’s most populous nation had in 2015 passed the Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAAP) Act into law.
The law, in Section 6(1), states that the circumcision or genital mutilation of the girl or woman is prohibited.
This Act specifically mentions FGM as a criminal act. It also makes FGM and other forms of gender-based violence like rape, spousal battery, forceful ejection from home, harmful widowhood practices punishable offences in the country.
However, since 2015, only 13 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have adopted the VAPP Act out of Nigeria’s 36 States.
The states are Oyo, Ogun, Lagos, Osun, Ekiti, Edo, Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi, Benue, Cross River, Kaduna, and Plateau.
But the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in 2018 reported that Osun, despite adopting the VAPP Act, still recorded the highest prevalence of FGM in Nigeria with 76.3 percent.
The National Orientation Agency (NOA) and UNICEF advised mothers in the state to stop the practice.
Speaking during the three-day public declaration, the UNICEF Consultant for Oyo, Ekiti and Osun, Aderonke Olutayo, said a surveillance team that would monitor hospitals, health workers and traditional birth attendants would soon be inaugurated.
‘The practice had been found to be causing deaths of female children apart from infringing on their rights. It is wrong to take away rights of female children just because this mutilation was being done when they have no capacity to fight for themselves’, Olutayo said.
‘Our target in UNICEF is to ensure that we must stop the practice before year 2030, so we need your support.
‘We are not going to leave you to this public declaration, we are going to monitor situations here and ensure that you comply’.
Source: Vanguard
Photo source: DFID
