Akwa Ibom delists child defilement, rape among bailable offences.

Akwa Ibom State government on Monday delisted child
defilement and rape among bailable offences in the state,
insisting that the perpetrators must be prosecuted.
The state Commissioner for Agriculture and Women Affairs,
Dr. Glory Edet, disclosed this at a one- day training
workshop on Gender-Based Violence Mitigation for the
Police and relevant Non-Governmental Organizations.
She said: “Anybody that rapes a child, there is nothing like
bail for that person and there is no sentiment about it no
matter who is involved, be it a father raping his own child
and so on. We must make sure that we work together to
prosecute that person.”
Edet said the government through her ministry has within
the year attended to over 452 cases of gender-based
violence, adding that 18 culprits had been prosecuted with
16 sentenced to different jail terms.
She said the workshop was a wake- up call for the police
and other relevant non- governmental organizations to live
up to their responsibilities in curbing gender-based violence
in the state.
The commissioner thanked Governor Udom Emmanuel for
providing an enabling environment for gender-based
violence cases to be followed up and for maintaining family
courts where such cases are handled.
In his keynote address, the state Commissioner of Police,
Imohimi Edgar, noted that gender-based violence topped
the criminal record in the state.
He said: “I can recall that immediately I assumed office as
the state Commissioner of Police, I called my field officers
to brief me of prevalent crimes in the state and one issue
that had very high statistics rate of prevalence was that of
gender-based violence, particularly issues such as rape,
defilement, and incest among others.”