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By Bimbola Oyesola
Women empowerment have been identified as one of the solutions to eliminate gender and social violence in the country.
According to the President of a Non Governmental Organization, Inspiring Women, Patience Aminu, if women are involved in trades or some vocation, it would reduce their dependence on men.
Speaking in Lagos during the third year celebration of the group, Aminu said poverty could be attributed to many of the crimes committed against women like battery and assault.
She charged women to improve themselves through vocational skills or education to reduce total reliance on their men.
She lamented that most women are going through tough situations, citing the DSS lady that jumped into the Lagoon in Lagos.
“Women are going through what is called emotional stress. Their major problem is domestic violence, been beaten by their men, treating them like second class citizens in their homes and molestation from different angles and the advent of social media, has helped most women to speak up,” she said.
She noted that the group has been able to settle a few cases of domestic violence and abuse cases within their group with the assistance of lawyers who are members.
Aminu explained that the group core responsibility is to impact women and has been doing that for the past three years.
“Part of our programme this year is a visit to the maternity ward of the University of Lagos Teaching Hospital in Idi -Araba to check on the new mothers with gift items like sanitary, diapers, food, beverages and cash gifts in order to celebrate the new born babies and give their mothers sense of well-being,” she said.
In 2018, the group visited destitute homes and orphanages with relieve materials, food items and cash donations
In 2019, Aminu said the group’s project was operation field the hungry in Iyana-Paja, where they were able to feed about five thousand homeless people within the environment and market and in the process, took homeless children to a nearby police station to return them to their families.
She said, “In 2020, we went to Ketu, repeat the same exercise but for the widows this time around and last year we went to the old peoples home in Isolo to celebrate Christmas with them and gave relief materials and numerous kinds of drugs with the assistance of medical personnel.
“It has been an amazing three years journey by the grace of God. Although stressful in terms of getting sponsors and raising funds to carry out projects”.
Aminu lamented that the major challenge the group is facing is raising funds, “Most times we don’t get the exact amount we need to carry out our projects, for this, we have to stretch our hands to other people outside the group.”
