Expert highlights factors exposing women to rape

A community development expert, Pastor Olugbe- miga Akande, recently in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, identified indecent dressing; night hawking; poverty; peer group influence; and natural disasters as factors responsible for the insurgence of rape cases in recent years.Other factors, he said, included unemployment, effect of broken home and divorce; ignorance; high risk jobs; psychological defect and political instability which had bedeviled the world globally, adding that the danger associated with these illicit acts were physical and psychological trauma.Akande made the submission at a one-day sensitisation programme on 'strategies to reduce rape cases and the spread of HIV/AIDS in Oyo State,' organised by the state Ministry of Women Affairs Community Development and Social Welfare, at the Ojoo motor garage, Ibadan.He said that vaginal bleeding; infections; fibroids; genital irritation; pain during intercourse; undesired pregnancy and aggression; stigmatisation; societal instability; depression, feeling of shame and lack of motivation, were associated with raping.He, therefore, identified sensitisation and public enlightenment; parental responsibility; regulation of immigration policy; provision of qualitative education; commensurate punishment for offenders; establishment of health and counselling centres, religious institutions and health officers, psychologists and parents as panacea for reducing case of the illicit act.The state Commission for Women Affairs, Community Development and Social Welfare, Mrs. Tinuke Osunkoya, reaffirmed that the programme would reduce and subsequently eradicate rape cases that had bedeviled the Nigerian society as young ladies and children were usually the victims.Osunkoya said that proactive measure needed to be taken to curb the social problem and enjoined all stakeholders to collaborate with the state government to wipe out the scourge.She said that the present administration in the state was aware of the havoc caused by rapists and had approved the implementation of the programme in some strategic areas in the state while some giant steps were in the pipeline to spread the news on the prevention of the scourge in all the nooks and crannies of the state.She, however, urged the people to be security conscious in their various communities against rapists by reporting them to security agents as the present government in the state was battle ready to wage war against them.
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