BY ANKELI EMMANUEL
No fewer than 50 traditional and religious leaders drawn from 2 local government areas of Sokoto State have been trained on how to address cases of Gender Based Violence in their respective dormains.
Training the leaders, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in collaboration with Plan Parenthood Federation of Nigeria (PPFN), also taught them how to educate their subjects on cases of COVID-19, Family Planning and Child Care amongst others.
The trained traditional, religious, women and youth leaders, were selected from five electoral wards each of Sokoto South and Dange/Shuni Local Government Areas of the state.
Speaking at the occassion, the State Coordinator of PPFN, Hajiya Hafsatu Halilu, hinted that the training is in order to harmonise the community leaders in each LGA, to work together in addressing cases of GBV, COVID-19 and family planning, among others.
“Today as you can see we are holding the session fo community leaders from Sokoto South LGA, we will continue with leaders from Dange/Shuni for the same exercise.
“This exercise is aimed at educating leaders against settling GBV cases in their respective communities and ways to tackle the menace at the grassroot as well as implications.
“Moreover, the programme is a pilot project which will also cover the remaining 21 LGAs of the state and we are fully confident that with the development, cases of GBV will be generally minimised,” she said.
On his part, the Chairman, Volunteer Organisation of PPFN, Mr Ibrahim Galadanchi, assured that the training would lead to improved support by the community leaders hence it’s giving them some degree of commitment and engagement towards taking ownership of the fight.
He said the action plan formation at community level would enhance the knowledge of the leaders towards addressing challenges of their communities.
