Human rights group in Niger State, International Centre for Sexual Reproductive Rights (INCRESE), has advocated 35 per cent affirmative action that would ensure the appointment of more female judges to handle rape and other gender-based cases strictly by merit.
The organization also called on the wife of the President, Hajiya Aisha Buhari, to intervene in series of denials of justice to women and victims of rape by male judges who are in the habit of adjourning rape cases brought before them under flimsy excuses.
The Executive Director INCRESE, Mrs. Dorothy Cesnabmihilo Aken’ova, in Minna said that it was regrettable that almost all the rape cases before male judges in the state suffered undue adjournments thereby denying the victims justice while the suspects are released on bail.
“Granting 35 percent affirmative to female judges will go a long way in giving hope of obtaining justice to victims of rape because women judges consider their name and integrity uppermost in judging cases while their male counterparts are easily compromised,” she said.
Aken’ova further said, “Violence Against Persons Prohibitions (VAPP) Act 2000 were meant to check gender violence and address issues of this nature but unfortunately most of the male judges we have here in Niger State have consistently delayed the cases thereby denying the victims justice”.
The executive director argued that such cases about human rights abuse were not supposed to linger for too long especially now that the victims are speaking out now with the aim of ending such abuses, saying, “Justice delayed is justice denied”.
With the ugly trend in the state judiciary, Aken’ova called for a systematic capacity building that will guarantee self-renewal in the judiciary sector of the nation’s economy for issues of human rights’ abuses to end in Nigeria.
“In the dispensation of justice we want total justice without bias. A number of human rights abuse cases such as rape pending in Courts where male Judges preside suffer unnecessary adjournments but if it were a woman Judge she will relate with the story presented before her with facts and judge accordingly”.
“We are calling on the President’s wife to intervene in a number of rape cases including the one involving a 12 year and a 14-year girls and that of a lecturer who threatened to kill his 16 years old student for revealing how she was raped by her supposed, Form Master”, Aken’ova said.
Aken’ova said that with the rampant rape cases that she was convinced that if more female judges appointed will help in protecting the cause of women because apart from checking undue adjournments for gender-based cases, ‘women are more discrete and fair in their judgments’.
According to her, “The judiciary is largely made up of men, so there is the need to increase their knowledge so that cases taken to courts that are headed by male magistrates that fit this discretion gives the feeling that we were elsewhere when the decades of rights were going on”.
“What is going on in the ministry of justice is a serious challenge,” Aken’ova said, adding that, “We must work together to appeal to their senses to do what is fair. We need more affirmative action in appointments of women into the judiciary until we attain that equality we must intensify sensitization”.
