In light of the horrifying gang rape of a woman from Abia State, Nigeria, the lackadasical attitude of the Nigerian Police in bringing the culprits to book and most worrying the “silence” of those who may have known the identities of the gang, it is heartening to know that some inititives are underway to highlight and and more importantly to do something about violence meted out to women across Africa. One such initiative is Ghana’s Mobi-Reportabuse mobile phone service.

According to Mobi-Reportabuse, the benefits of its service include:

• Allowing witnesses of domestic violence and abuses to report their case quickly at anywhere and anytime
• Informants are assured their identity is kept secret
• Provide the Police Service (DOVVSU) with faster and efficient access to the reports of victims and witnesses of domestic violence and abuses to act upon
• Provide factual and concise statistics about Domestic Violence easily
• Cost of transportation and making phone calls to make reports is avoided

Sample SMS Report

[ V GAR, Accra C 24/14, My uncle has been raping me I need help, F ]

As an example, the message above is sent as a text message to a short code mobile number set up by Mobi-Reportabuse.

On receipt of the text message an automated response is generated notifying the informant/victim that their text message has been received and steps are being taking to take the case forward.

Mobi-Reportabuse then sends the message to its own Mobi-Reporting web based application platform where a wealth of intelligence is gathered as shown in the charts below. The intelligence and information gathered is monitored by the Domestic Volience and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service.

This is a good service and perhaps one that could have saved the heart ache that the woman from Abia state had to endure suspecting as we all did that the perpetrators of the rape in question were not unknown. Perhaps a cost effective, anonymised and simple way of reporting them to the Nigerian police could have, via a service similar to Mobi-Reportabuse’s oiled the wheels of justice more swiftly.

Photo Courtesy: Dreamzz2020 and Mobi-Reportabuse

Nii Thompson