Julie Okah-Donli, the Director-General of the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP), has stated that young boys in Nigeria are more vulnerable to rape than girls.
Okah-Donli based her opinion on the fact that many people tend to focus more on girls being raped and forget the reality that the incident of rape for boys in Nigeria is presently on the rise.
She made her comments on June 27, 2020 at the flag-off for the ‘Cover Me’ campaign aimed at exposing those responsible for child abuse, advocate for stricter punishment for rapists and put in place stronger mechanisms for preventing approach.
Her words:
I do not advocate for capital punishment of death sentence because it will make rapists become brutal because they will not want to leave witnesses and it will also encourage jungle justice with people using it to accuse and kill people falsely.
Boys are more vulnerable to rape because we tend to focus more on girls so we need to focus on all our children. Now you see a lot of silly videos with people sharing and reposting, If you send it to me I will arrest you for child pornography, anyone who stigmatizes against victims will be punished. We need to make people know that we are serious.
During the lockdown, a lot of things where revealed to us, we realized that most of the reports we got was from observant neighbors and not parents.”
