The African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), with funding from Christian Aid Nigeria, shall on September 1, 2021, commence a gender justice project to strengthen the advocacy skills of faith and traditional leaders in Nigeria.

The project, to be implemented by the Nigeria Side-by-Side Movement for Gender Justice, seeks to contribute to freeing citizens from cultural and interpersonal systems of privilege and oppression, as well as from violence and repression based on gender.

Gender injustice issues are prevalent across Nigeria, and mostly affect women. They include child marriage, Female Genital Mutilation, discriminatory widowhood practices, rape, spousal maltreatment and abuse, intimate partner violence, denying women access to leadership positions, limited access to economic assets.

A statement released by the project lead, Mr. Vincent Dania, said the project will be implemented for six (6) months, and is focused on establishing a mechanism for faith actors and traditional leaders to respond to identified issues of gender injustice within their congregations, social groups, and communities. The project is building on already established foundations laid by previous interventions.

Activities of the project, which are designed to have a national appeal, will also centre on the subnational, particularly in 2 states of Ekiti and Kaduna, directly targeting 150 faith leaders, traditional rulers, and gender champions. Indirectly, we seek to reach at least 10,000 persons across diverse groups of society. It is expected that all the people reached with the message will push for gender justice in their own space.

Note: Side by Side is a growing global movement of faith and traditional leaders, with a vision of a world where everybody, women and men, boys and girls, are valued equally, and can share equitably in the distribution of power, knowledge, and resources. It was officially launched in Nigeria in 2018 with support from Christian Aid and the Centre LSD. The Side-by-Side movement is a platform that allows faith and traditional leaders to build a movement to champion the rights of women and girls, men and boys for the attainment of gender justice.

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