By: Hajara Umar Nataala
The Federal Government is set to establish a volunteer squad to protect senior citizens from abuses by members of the public, the Director-General of the National Senior Citizens Centre (NSCC), Dr Emem Omokaro, announced on Sunday.
Omokaro while speaking at an interview session with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
Stated that the squad would intervene in cases of abuse against their senior citizens by some unscrupulous members of the society.
The director-general named some of the abuses being faced by senior citizens to include verbal abuse, emotional abuse, financial, care-giving abuse and abuse by family members.
She re-enforced that the establishment of the squad has become imperative, noting that it was heartless for anyone to maltreat an elderly person.
Omokaro said that the NSCC had received many reports of senior citizens being abused in Nigeria and that the volunteer squad is being created to tackle such problems.
“One in every nine older person’s face some sort of abuse, this report comes from recent research findings. Senior citizens are some of the most abused people when we talk about verbal, emotional, and financial abuse.
“With the number of people with dementia increasing yearly and with what happens to them when they are no longer coherent is sad.
“They lose all their memories and they begin to say things and become aggressive, when that happens most times they end up being bullied and before you know it they just wander away.
“They don’t know who they are and when you ask them they don’t know where they have been. They do not even know anybody and at this phase, society begins to pounce on them.
“They are made to make confessions and asked all manners of questions and obviously they will be talking in an uncomprehensive manner with many of them being beaten, stoned, stripped or even getting killed in the process.
“They suffer so many abuses and these abuses are going on in communities and even within their family units. Most of these cases end up eventually unreported.
“Caregiver abuses and family abuses are ongoing problems happening right now that we are facing, and
because older persons cannot report and even if they wanted to, there are no proper mechanisms set in
place for them to do so. Their rights are violated without any real consequence to the perpetrators.
“We have identified all the fundamental issues and we are working with the relevant agencies, including the National Human Rights Commission and the Legal Aid Counsel to tackle the issues,’’ Omokaro stated.
Source News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)