By Felix Khanoba
A Civil Society Organisation, Wanda Adu Foundation, has taken its campaign against child sexual abuse to the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA).
The Organisation called on the umbrella Muslims’ body in the country to help battle the societal menace that has become a regular problem in the country.
Speaking during a visit to NSCIA in Abuja, Founder of the Foundation, Wanda Ebe, said there is a need for all-out war to protect children from sexual predators in the society.
“We know that religious leaders play a very vital role in our society and we deem it fit to use them as a tool for awareness creation and advocacy as well, because everyone respects his or her religious leader.
“We have also discovered a lot of sodomy going on in different communities and are not limited to a particular religion or tribe. It is a universal issue, we can all tackle it together,” she said.
Wanda said the Foundation has taken similar campaigns to Christian’s organisations, National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), among others.
She said: “The whole aim of this meeting is to see how best to protect our children from sex offenders, from paedophiles, from persons who derive pleasure in defiling children, and we have been able to meet with the NAPTIP, the Nigeria Police, we have met with Christians Association of Nigeria and community leaders.
“We have also carried out street campaigns, community campaigns on what people need to do when there are cases of child sexual abuse to prevent all of these things.”
Receiving the Foundation on behalf of the Chairman of NSCIA; His Eminence, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto, the Deputy Legal Adviser of the Council, Haroun Muhammad Eze, expressed the readiness of the body to always support every efforts to tackle child sexual abuse in the country.
His words: “It is quite unfortunate that these social vices you have enumerated are also prevalent in the Muslim community where we have laws in the Quran and in the practices of the Messenger of Allah (SAW). That only we should abide by those laws, by those rules and regulations we will not see even one case of sexual abuse, of child abuse, of forced marriage, of infant marriages whether by consent or otherwise.
“We need to go back to our laws and as Muslims we need to go back to the laws of the Almighty as enshrined in the Quran.
“Islam abhors forced marriage, Islam frowns at early marriage of any girl-child. Islam will not support any of these and as Muslims who know the teaching of Islam, we will stand with any organisation, whosoever, that promotes upright society,” he said.
