An Enugu-based Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Women Aid Collective (WACOL), says it recorded no fewer than 227 sexual and gender-based violence within the last three months.

Its founder, Prof. Joy Ezilo, who briefed newsmen on the NGO’s activities on Monday in Enugu, listed the cases to include rape, defilement, incest, harmful cultural practices, malicious damage to property, child abuse and trafficking.

Others included physical and emotional abuses, early and forced marriage, forceful ejection and abandonment of spouse, and discrimination on grounds of sex and custody.

The founder said that 81 of such cases were recorded in April, 72 in May, while 74 cases were recorded in June.

She said that 26 cases of rape, defilement, and incest were reported to WACOL within the period under review, adding that the NGO had taken measures to ensure that the victims got justice.

The university don said that one of such cases involved a 12-year-old girl raped by a 43-year old man.

Another case, he said, involved a 10-year-old housemaid who was allegedly raped by the husband of the woman she was living with at Agbani village in Nkanu West Local Government Area.

She said that the Police Command in the state had commenced an investigation into the cases with some nearing completion.

Ezilo said that one of the cases being investigated involved a 16-year-old girl from Ebonyi, who reported her father for allegedly forcing her to marry a 40-year old man in exchange for “basic family sustenance” during the recent lockdown occasioned by the Coronavirus pandemic.

“The girl was visibly shaken by the ordeal in the hands of her father who refused to accept the suitor she preferred,” she said.

Ezilo also spoke of an 87-year-old widow from Akegbe Ugwu, Enugu State, whose two brothers-in-law attempted to stop her from inheriting her husband’s landed property.

The founder regretted that such abuses were becoming even more common “in spite of enabling laws which prescribe severe sanctions”.