The British Council, Nigeria, has trained 36 police officers in Adamawa State on how to fast-track the prosecution of perpetrators of Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in the state.
Abdullahi Laminga, the council’s Programme Officer, Managing Conflicts, enjoined the officers at the end of a three-day training on Friday, in Yola, to always ensure that SGBV survivors get justice.
“The whole essence is to attain prosecution, when a child or an adult is violated, definitely the law must take its course before prosecution can take place.
“We have given you investigative skills among others, on how to deal with perpetrators and bring them to book by way of taking them to court for prosecution,” he said.
According to him, by the training, a lot of perpetrators will be prosecuted unlike before, and at the end of the day SGBV cases will be reduced in the state.
Lamingo reminded the officers that when SGBV cases were reported, the survivors were often refered to the sexual referral centre, known as ‘Adamawa Hope Centre’ for investigation.
In his remarks, ASP Olole Ola, Area Commander, Yola, commended the council for organisation the training for the selected officers.
Ola said that the training had exposed the officers to new techniques, information and new ways of handling SGBV cases.
He said with the world best practices, “things that we have not been doing well, we now know how to do them better to provide justice for the victims of SGBV”.
Also speaking, Insp. Iju Mperiju, expressed satisfaction at the new insights the training had exposed the participants to effective service delivery in dealing with SGBV cases.
“They made it clearly for most of us that were in investigative department and family support units to know most of our roles especially in the area of sexual based violence.
“We now know how to treat them with confidentially as one of the factors that give trust among many things,” he said.
The police officers were drawn from four family support units of pilot Police Stations to fast-track the prosecution of perpetrators of Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) in the state.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Programme is managed by British Council and funded by the European Union
