Women rights activists and community leaders in Gombe State have deplored the exploitation and rape of teenage girls in the state in the name of farm labour otherwise known as ‘Barema’.
They made the lamentation during a capacity building training organised by ActionAid Nigeria’ to women rights organisations and stakeholders on combating violence against women and girls under its project tagged ‘SLOC VAWG’.
In an interview with LEADERSHIP, some of the participants, Iklima Ahmad from Lawanti village of Akko LGA, Sara Adams, a female student from Kwami LGA and Maina Bala Shango, a community leader from Garko community decried the practice.
They uncovered that the engagement of girls for labour on farms by farmers has become so rampant in the state pointing out that the practice stops many of the girls from going to school and making unscrupulous elements to take the advantage and rape them on the farms.
According to them, many girls in the state have taken commercial farm labour as a source of livelihood as they troop out on streets during rainy seasons looking for prospective farmers to patronize them.
They however pointed out that some bad people use the opportunity to take the girls elsewhere and have sex with them, calling on parents to stop their female children from the practice because of the negative repercussions.
While saying that girls are engaged more than boys for farm labour in the state, the participants revealed that they are being paid a token sum of N100 to N500 by the farmers as wages for their labour.
Earlier, a facilitator at the workshop and executive director of a child rights group known as ‘Advocacy for Children’s Rights Initiative’ Barrister Martha Daniel decried that those who hire girls for farm labour onload them in a vehicle and cause them to work from morning to evening on farms for meagre stipends.
“As a result of that, girls are being raped, they are being violated, they are not taken to school, and their education is suffering setbacks. That is ‘Barema’ in summary,” she stated.
She therefore said the training was aimed at encouraging women and girls to speak out against gender-based violence and report cases to appropriate authorities for actions.
This is just as she noted that community and traditional leaders were also part of the training in order for them to be enlightened on the matters of violence against women so they could help in tackling the menace in their domains.
