Bisi Fayemi disclosed this during an Instalive chat with Zonal Police PRO, Dolapo Badmus on Sunday, June 7.

Bisi Fayemi said “Last year, when the Busola Dakolo issue happened, I stressed the importance of us listening to stories of rape survivors and I shared my own experience when I was a young girl. I was around 10 at the time, my mother brought one of his relatives from her hometown to help the house. Because we were kids, we usually sleep in the same room then. I was on the bed with one of my aunties, my brother was on another bed and this young man was sleeping somewhere near our bed. In the middle of the night, he started pulling my bedsheet. Initially, I thought it was a mistake. So, he would pull the bed sheet and I would pull them back. He did it again and I pulled them back. So, the third time, I decided to wait and see if he was doing it on purpose. Lo and Behold, he pulled the sheet totally off me. At that point, I asked him ‘what are you doing?’ and he replied ‘kosi’ (which in English means nothing). The following morning, as early as 6 am, I went up to my mother and narrated what happened to me. When I came back from school that afternoon, he was already gone. That was my mother’s relative. What if I had told my mother and she had said ‘shut up, how dare you?’ What could have happened to me? It meant that her relative could have proceeded to do something else with me. So, we need to listen to our children.”

Mrs Fayemi, who said this at the 20th anniversary of Project Alert on Violence Against Women in Lagos, said the declaration would bring about the political will to fight the scourge and would also enable the states that had passed the law on Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act, to implement the law to the fullest.

She said “It has taken a long time but we have some laws in place. We have the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act VAPP, and out of the 36 States of Nigeria, only 11 States have domesticated this law. Even for those who have domesticated the law, there is an issue of resources. We are talking about financial resources, human resources, materials resources, as well as technical resources. We do need resources to push these issues through but we need the political will to drive the allocation of those resources. I will like to lend my voice to the voice of all the feminist organizations, human rights and civil society organizations in the country, calling for more attention to what has now become a national pandemic of gender-based violence, particularly sexual violence.   In my own opinion, I believe we need the State of Emergency in Nigeria on sexual violence in particular. I think we need to call for more political will and that will hopefully drive things such as ensuring that those States who have passed the VAPP Act can implement it to the fullest, at least try their best.   I will like to call for political will, I will like to call for resources and I will like to also call for a lot more partnerships and information sharing”.

The Ekiti State Government, in collaboration with the office of Wife of the Governor, is making moves to amend the gender-based law to see that rapists get a more severe sentence. This is in a bid to deter offenders.

A public hearing on the GBV amendment bill was held at the state House of Assembly on Thursday, October 10, in the state capital.

At the public hearing, the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr Wale Fapohunda, said the amendment to the bill might include medical castration, compulsory psychiatric test and disqualification of offenders from benefiting from government’s social investment programmes.

Mrs. Fayemi, in her address, said her office has been overwhelmed with complaints relating to all forms of violence, particularly against women. She said the amendment of the bill has become imperative to make offenders accountable and to be a voice for victims.

Mrs Fayemi said: “To make the law effective, we are going decentralise the referral centres and all the local governments will have one each. You don’t need to come to the state capital before lodging your complaints. The GBV management committee has been brought back to attend to complaints. I felt distressed to hear when we returned last year that the committee didn’t meet for four years after we had left. I’m not the owner of the law; it is for men and women in Ekiti. We only championed it. It is to protect us, our families and the society against all forms of discrimination so that we can all live life of respect and dignity. Violence against women keeps increasing in Ekiti. We appeal to the House to pass this law expeditiously.”

Bisi said she was luckier than some of the victims because hers didn’t go far, but she noted it was an unpleasant experience.

She said “I cried because what this young women have experience is the story of many of us who passed through higher institution in this country. I was educated here in Nigeria and I too was a victim of sexual harassment during my university days. I was luckier than these victims. It didn’t go that far but it was extremely unpleasant and of course back in the days when all these things happened you can’t tell anyone because if you do even up till now people ask you to keep shut. You know people don’t talk about things like this. I was watching the documentary and there were three words that came to me, one is voice, it is time to speak up and speak out and for those who do we need to stand with them and stand by them and not silence them because the culture of silence has endured enough. Another word that came to me was accountability, we need to be accountable whether there are parents, guidance or teachers or leaders in any form through out the different section of society. We have to be accountable for the well being and health of the young people in our care, from when our children come to say mummy, uncle so so and so touched me and instead of asking further to find out what’s its all about, we should act. There has to be accountability and the third thing that came to mind was justice, justice for victim or I choose to call them survivors and so those of us who have worked in the women’s whether at international level or Africa or national air in Nigeria, we know that we have many law and policies in place that are supposed to guard against things such as this but this law sometimes means very little because there is inadequate political”.