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Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Group stirs cultural controversy, campaigns against tribal marks

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In a move that is bound to stir controversy along cultural lines, a group of Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) is initiating a campaign against inscription of tribal marks on the girl-child.
Nigerians of different cultural leanings are divided on the issue of tribal marks, which some see as barbaric and others see as a mark of cultural identity.
There are said to be over 500 ethnic nationalities and people groups in Nigeria’s over 210 million population, and it is left to be seen how the controversy over tribal marks will fly.
“Soon these same characters who endorse tattoos, body piercing, and unbridled nakedness will tell us that dressing the African way is barbaric. It makes us unique, and these people who want to exhaust funding they get from strange sources should call us together and discuss for an agreed position, rather than push a strange agenda,” a cultural advocate, Ogbeni Bayo Raufu said months ago when the issue of tribal marks came up.
But the group of NGOs is also pushing against forced and early marriages as well as gender based violence.
In a joint communique on Wednesday, the group, after the end its multi-stakeholder dialogue held in Abuja, consisting of the Association of Wives of FCT Traditional Rulers (AWTR), Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA), Community and Girl-Child Support Initiative (Com-Aid) and Spotlight Initiative Programme, among others, agreed to combine efforts against all forms of gender based violence, especially against women, early and forced marriages and defacing of the girl-child with traditional marks.
Moreso, the NGOs moved to ensure integration of Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015 and Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy Response into sexual and reproductive health, education and migration in the Abuja Municipal Area Council.
Urging women and girls to speak out when they experience incidents of violence, discrimination and injustice against them, the stakeholders stressed that even the two leading religions in Nigeria provide for women’s rights to own property; adding that there was that necessity for them to be educated they could achieve this without stress.
The communique while charging all “youths to eschew all acts of violence that threaten Human dignity”, called on the society to change its perspective, assuring that women were also good leaders and they should be supported to lead.
▪︎ Additional reports by Abuja Digest per Damilola Adeleke
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