The Executive Director of a civil society organisation, Street Mentors Network, Anita Michael, has said many Nigerians are unaware that emotional or psychological abuse of another person could be a criminal offence.

Street Mentors Network, headquartered in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, provides support to street children.

“There is little to zero understanding or awareness by the public of such things as emotional, verbal and psychological abuse,” Ms Michael told PREMIUM TIMES in Uyo on Thursday.

She was commenting on the section of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015, which deals with emotional abuse.

The Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act, otherwise known as VAPP, is intended to check the increasing rates of gender-based violence in Nigeria.

Thirty-four states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, have domesticated the VAPP Act as of November 2022.

A state like Akwa Ibom has translated the VAPP Act into four indigenous languages.

Section 14(1) of the act states, “A person who causes emotional, verbal and psychological abuse on another commits an offence and is liable on conviction to confinement for a period not exceeding one year or to a fine not exceeding N200,000 or to both such fine and confinement.”

Commenting on this section of the VAPP Act, Ms Michael said, “The victims seldom realise that what is happening to them is abuse, and the abusers give no thought to it as abuse.”

Ms Michael urged the Nigerian media to step up the awareness campaign on the VAPP Act.

She said Nigerians would begin to take the VAPP Act seriously when offenders are punished and there is publicity around it.

“Nobody takes a law without consequences seriously,” she added.

Mrs Michael also spoke about Section 12(1), which deals with “forced financial dependence or economic abuse”.

She said Nigerians may find it difficult to believe that a man can be jailed for preventing his wife from working and earning wages.

“That is the extent to which the practice of forced financial dependence has become a norm. It’s accepted, propagated and encouraged,” she said.

Continuing, she said, “Economic abuse is reaping where you did not sow. It can include exerting control over income, spending, bank accounts, bills and borrowing.

“For instance, the woman and man work, but the woman has to surrender her salary to the man at the end of the month.

“It sounds inhuman to the refined, civilised mind, but it is perfectly acceptable and normal to an abused mind,” she added.

“Sensitisation should come from the body that made the law and then be supported by other parastatals. TV houses, radio stations, newspapers, blogs, everyone should talk about it.

“Until a primary school child can explain the VAPP law, we should not rest on our oars. (There is) no point creating a law that cannot be used.”