Musa Na Allah Sokoto
A community group, (Zauren Sulhu) in Binji Local Government Area of Sokoto has urged parents to give equal rights and support to their sons and daughters.
The Leader of the group, Alhaji Ibrahim Hakimi-Maikulki made the call during a town hall meeting on “Gender Equitable Norms” organized by the Sultan Foundation for Peace and Development (SFPD), on Tuesday at Binji, Sokoto State.
The group expressed concern over what it termed as a “discriminatory attitude of some parents to support boys for educational pursuit and other meaningful economic empowerment to the detriment of girls.”
Hakimi-Maikulki identified poor understanding, culture, and compromise as challenges to tackling the aforementioned factors in communities.
According to him, the challenge of discriminatory attitudes toward the female gender in society is detrimental to women’s and girls’ development.
He underscored the importance of educating people, especially men who are husbands and custodians of family members on gender equity norms and the best ways to handle cases of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) cases.
In his remarks, the Programme Officer of Sultan Foundation, Alhaji Musa Galadanci said that the town hall meeting was to strengthen the group’s advocacy skill in promoting gender equitable norms in Sokoto State.
He explained that the foundation, with support from the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative Project, embarked on capacity building to prevent all forms of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG), Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), and other Harmful Practices (HP) against women.
He cautioned against psychological, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse of women and girls, stressing that poor language of communication could also subject a woman to different traumatic unrest.
Other participants at the meeting stressed the need to educate men, especially husbands, on the best ways to check gender equitable norms and SGBV and support survivors.
The meeting featured a question-and-answer session, as well as experience-sharing among participants and facilitators
