A stakeholders forum on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) has suggested the urgent employment of more magistrates and lawyers to end the threat of GBV in Bauchi State.
The forum which brought together magistrates, lawyers, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), the media and
representatives of local councils, also called for the provision of more funds and logistic support to both the Police and the judiciary to ensure that perpetrators of GBV are brought to justice.
These suggestions came handy at a one day stakeholders engagement organized by a Bauchi based
NGO “We Aid Initiative,” with support from Urgent Action Fund Africa, with the aim of addressing the issue of gender based violence in Bauchi State and likely suggestions to end the menace.
Addressing the forum, Magistrate Haruna Abdulmumin Mamman said the state judiciary was grossly understaffed and for quick dispensation of justice to be achieved, the government should employ more judges from the qualified lawyers now roaming the street to help in handling several cases pending in the courts across the state.
“It will surprise you to hear that the entire Bauchi State judiciary has only Forty Magistrates and Twenty of them are required in the state capital. Some magistrates handle as many as seventy to 100 cases, so yo can see how stressful this can be,” he added.
Magistrate Abdulmumin who attributed most cases of GBV to poverty from his experience, called for legislation that would compel community leaders to speak out against all forms of violence, noting that their silence might allow the practice to flourish.
Also speaking, Barrister Maimuna Ibrahim of the Bauchi State Ministry of Justice frowned at the public perception about the police saying, “most people are quick to accuse the police of compromising, but they failed to understand that many of them (police) even use their money to do official work because of lack of logistic support, how then do we expect them to perform to our expectation.”
Maimuna was emphatic by saying “whatever the court does is dependent on police performance and we can’t get it right if the police don’t get it right, so government must empower the police to support the court to sanction perpetrators of GBV.”
Earlier, while presenting a baseline overview of GBV situation in Bauchi State, the Executive Director of an NGO “Child Is Gold” Barrister Elizabeth George hailed the community mediation initiative adopted by Bauchi residents via the “ZAUREN SULHU,” but regretted that traditional leaders often allowed perpetrators of GBV to escape justice.
Barrister Elizabeth therefore called for synergy between the courts, CSOs, the police and community leaders to fight the menace of gender based violence in Bauchi State before it consumes the entire landscape.
In her remark, the Executive Director of an NGO “Afri-Hub” Dr. Sa’adatu Danladi, commended Bauchi State Government for reporting forty six cases as recorded on the GBV dashboard as recorded on the State Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Development, hoping that more of such reports would be brought to public notice in future.
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