Akwa Ibom State Government is considering the establishment of special offences courts to handle Gender-Based Violence (GBV) offenders as cases continue to increase with spousal battery, abandonment and rape on the rise.
The State Government under the Violence Against Persons(Prohibition Law) 2020 seeks to eliminate violence in private and public life, prohibit all forms of violence against persons and provide maximum protection and effective remedies for victims.
The VAPP Law can be used to seek and secure justice for acts of violence meted out to them and makes provisions for the punishment of offenders who go against the law.
Emem Ette, a Lawyer and Secretary, Akwa Ibom State Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Management Committee and who heads the GBV response department, Ministry of Justice made this known during an interaction to mark a month-long GBV awareness campaign in the State.
Ette said the establishment of the special courts would help to quicken the dispensation of justice involving GBV offenders.
“We are still going back to the Chief Judge and still call for a special court, for SGBV, we need it in Akwa Ibom and we even suggested that even the family court that we would have suggested should take up SGBV cases is established by law only to deal with cases that involve children.
“So we cannot even take those SGBV cases to those courts. So we still need at least two to even start with even if the courts will be overloaded with cases because they are many. That is why in some cases that require continuous relationship, we try Alternative Dispute Resolution processes which include mediation and negotiation, especially when it comes to child custody, the crime here would be the abandonment of dependents.
“We do mediation as we don’t have to take those ones to court and verbal abuse ,we don’t need to take to court We look at cases we can handle through mediation and we now push severe cases like rape, pouring acid on people to the courts and then spousal battery which we can do mediation when it is not severe”, he said.
Ette, who disclosed that for the first time in the history of the State, a conviction for spousal battery had been recorded, described it as a major milestone since it had never happened before adding that the man being the offender was jailed for three years for stabbing his wife.
“The woman stood firm and said the matter must get to the court, adding that “if she had died, it could have been for nothing, disclosing that “the man stabbed his wife because she gave the children sachet water instead of bottled water”, he added.
From the data made available to the media, the State Government recorded a total of 1520 cases of GBV between June 2020 and June 2025 while it achieved 76 convictions during the same period.
Read also: ‘No longer business as usual for GBV offenders in Akwa Ibom’
According to the data released by the GBV response department, threats to life/physical assault topped the list with 23 cases in January followed by spousal battery with 10 cases during the same period while emotional abuse and rape recorded four cases each. In all, January had a total of 41 GBV cases.
Also, February which had a total of 36 cases, recorded 17 cases of threat to life/physical assault 7 cases of spousal battery, three cases of emotional abuse and two cases of child abandonment/denial/access and seven cases of rape.
In March, 32 cases of GBV were received, 14 of which were as as a result of threat to life/physical assault, 6 were for emotional abuse and spousal battery respectively while it recorded two cases of harmful widowhood practices and two cases of rape.
For April, it had a total of 29 cases with 11 cases of spousal battery, 9 cases of threat to life/physical assault, one forceful ejection, three cases of child abandonment and five cases of rape.
The State also recorded 10 cases of threat to life/physical assault in May, 7 cases of spousal battery, two cases of emotional abuse, two cases of child abandonment and one case of rape while it had two cases of spousal battery in June.
According to the data, Akwa Ibom State recorded a total of 21 cases of rape between January and June 2, this year.
