Nigeria’s Faith Leaders Urge Community Sensitization to Address Rising Domestic Violence

AFJN and DJP officials further say that many homes have become places where children who serve as house helps are abused and traumatized “in unimaginable ways.” 

Some of the abuses and traumas the children face lead to their death, they lament, and underscore the need to put in place mechanisms “to address such issues, bring justice to the victims and appropriate punishment to the perpetrators.”

They call upon community leaders to establish mechanisms to monitor the welfare of children that are taken into homes for domestic service. 

The mechanisms should include ensuring that these children have regular communications with their parents on the phone, the faith leaders say in the statement signed by AFJN Coordinator of Women Project, Sr. Eucharia Madueke, and the Promoter for Justice and Peace in the Dominican Province of Nigeria and Ghana, Fr. Frederick Ifeanyi Obananya.

Officials of the two entities add that community members need “to tackle practices that impinge on the rights and dignity of God’s children such as the dispossession of women of their heritage, and confiscation of their properties once their husbands die, denying them and the children of their rights in the community.”

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AFJN and DJP officials also call on Nigerians to ensure that the practice of forcing girls to leave their homes in search of money for their families or to get married is abolished “as this has mostly provided the grounds for domestic violence.”

“Poverty should not be an excuse to force a child into domestic servitude, or marriage,” they say. 

The faith leaders call for shared responsibility in bringing up children, saying, “Our forebears understood the benefits of collective contribution to raising children as noted in the saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’” 

“We urge that the protection of children be the collective responsibility of the family and the community,” they say. 

AFJN and DJP officials call on community leaders to serve as role models “by calling out persons in the community who engage in violence and abuse in the families, especially that of the house helpers who are often children from poor homes, or orphans.”

On their part, the faith leaders say they will continue to sensitize school children about violence and educate the communities to understand the negative impact of violent domestic disputes.

Magdalene Kahiu is a Kenyan journalist with passion in Church communication. She holds a Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). Currently, she works as a journalist for ACI Africa.