The Nigerian Association of Women Journalists (NAWQJ) has attributed the rising cases of rape in Nigeria to the lack of toilet facilities in many houses.
A NAN report said the chairperson of the Plateau Chapter of NAWOJ, Jennifer Yarima, disclosed this during an interview.
She argued that if women and girls had proper toilet facilities, hoodlums would not find them easily as rape target.
Yarima said NAWOJ had made a case to the Commissioner for Environment in Plateau State on the need to ensure that houses had toilet facilities, adding that defecating in the open by females, aside from the health implications, provided opportunities for rapists.
The chairperson advised that parents should be mindful of people they entrusted their children to as most rape and abuse cases were usually carried out by such persons.
She also called on parents to educate their children on sex education, saying that if they failed to do so, peers and other people might do so in a wrong manner.
“We must educate our children as a family so that when they go to the society, they will know what act is wrong or right, and would also know how to control themselves outside.” she said.
She said that the culture of silence by most families when a member was raped, needed to be jettisoned as such act encouraged culprits to continue the heinous crime.
A NAN report of July 2019 quoted the Acting Managing Director of Jos Metropolitan Development Board (JMDB), Mr Kefas Yilrwang, of lamenting that some houses in Bukuru and Jos metropolis were built without toilet facilities.
He said that the occupants of such houses simply located nearby bush or abandoned building structures, to ease themselves.
A female tenant (name withheld) had also told the wired news service that she often went to nearby ‘bush’ to defecate, adding, “that is what most tenants in this area do.”
‘’It is not a new thing; we are used to it and we have accepted it because the house rent is very cheap and affordable to us.
“Some day, our income might improve to enable us secure accommodations with toilet facilities, but for now, this is what we can afford, ” she had said. (NAN)
