16th October, 2017
By Kazeem Ugbodaga
The Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team, DSVRT, on Monday said the state has recorded 950 cases of domestic and sexual violence cases in the last 10 years, just as it unveiled a short code, 6820, for reporting incidents of rape, domestic violence and child abuse in the State.
The 950 reported cases is about 100 per cent increase, compared to last year of 452 domestic and sexual violence cases.
Coordinator of DSVRT, Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi who made this known at a news briefing in Alausa, Ikeja said of the 950 cases, most of them were domestic violence cases.
Vivour-Adeniyi, who attributed the increase in the number of reported cases to the success of the various advocacy campaigns and information about where to get help in case of abuse, however pointed out that the statistics was not an indication to a growth in the rate of abuse.
However, unveiling the 6820 Short Message Service (SMS) short code, the Alternate Chairman of DSVRT, Omotilewa Ibirogba said the code, 6820 which could be used for Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, USSD and Short Messaging Service, SMS, was part of efforts to enable victims of all forms of abuse or eye witnesses to reach out to the appropriate authorities and receive prompt information about what to do and most importantly how victims can receive succour.
Ibirogba, who said the code is user friendly explained that it is free of charge, adding that the shortcode would also enable the State Government to collate daily and monthly incidents information on prevalence and generate heat maps, thereby providing a comprehensive Central database that could be used for the formulation of policies to prevent cases.
She said arrangements had been made to sensitise residents while efforts are ongoing to get assistive devices to cater for physically challenged persons to enable them to report cases and discourage people from misusing the short code or the 737 and 112 toll free emergency numbers through which residents can also report cases.
“Activating 6820 would also assist the state government in gathering and collating incident information, generate heat-maps within the metropolis, providing automated daily and monthly reporting, providing comprehensive central database, information system and analytics and providing central information that can also be used for formulation of prevalence and prevention policies for Lagos State,” she said.
According to her, the use of technology to combat sexual and gender based violence was the first of its kind in Nigeria and she is optimistic of the great results that the short code would yield in the fight against sexual and gender based violence.
“In the next coming weeks, we would be embarking on aggressive social media campaigns, jingles on radio and television. We would also have outdoor engagement, billboards as well as use of BRT buses.”
Also, Ibirogba disclosed that 10 persons had been registered in the Lagos State Sex offenders’ register this year, adding that the newly inaugurate DNA forensic Centre would enable the appropriate agencies to monitor the offenders.
She said the Lagos Sex offenders register was opened in 2014 to complement the crime data register in the State, shame offenders and serve as deterrent to others.