Kano, Nigeria | November 26,2025
The consultations form a deliberate pre-summit process aimed at strengthening alignment across government institutions, religious authorities, traditional leadership structures, and justice sector actors, in response to persistent gaps in survivor protection and accountability for sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in Kano State.
Leadership of the Kano Council of Imams
Kano remains the only state in Nigeria yet to fully pass its domesticated Violence Against Persons Prohibition (VAPP) Law, despite the harmonisation of key VAPP provisions into the Kano State Penal Code Amendment Bill (2021). The absence of a fully enacted legal framework continues to limit protection pathways for survivors and constrain coordinated institutional response.
Strategic Pre-Summit Engagements Across Institutions
Over the past two weeks, Lift Africa Foundation leads a series of structured consultations with key stakeholders whose roles are critical to advancing gender protection, justice delivery, and community accountability.
Institutions engaged include:
• Kano State Council of Ulama, led by Sheikh Ibrahim Khalil
• Kano State Council of Imams led by Sheikh Muhammad Nasir Adam
• Kano State Ministry of Justice
• Kano State Ministry of Women Affairs
• Kano State Ministry of Education
• Kano State Ministry of Budget and Planning
• Kano State Ministry of Health
• Kano State Ministry of Information
• Kano State Ministry of Religious Affairs
• Kano State House of Assembly
• Traditional leaders across emirate councils
The engagements focus on identifying operational bottlenecks, strengthening institutional coordination, and building shared ownership of reform priorities ahead of the summit.
Key Issues Addressed During Consultations
Discussions across institutions centre on long-standing challenges affecting survivor protection and justice outcomes in Kano State, including:
• delays and gaps in prosecution processes
• limited access to survivor-centred legal and psychosocial services
• child protection concerns and school-based vulnerabilities
• rising cases of digital and technology-facilitated violence against women and girls
• weak coordination between security, justice, health, and social service systems
• community-level pressures that discourage reporting and accountability
With a population exceeding 16 million people and only one Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) serving all 44 local government areas, stakeholders acknowledge the urgent need to strengthen institutional capacity and expand survivor support infrastructure.
Kano State Ministry of Women Affairs
Building Consensus Ahead of the Summit
The consultations are designed as a consensus-building process rather than symbolic engagements. Lift Africa Foundation emphasises alignment across legal, religious, executive, legislative, and traditional institutions as essential to sustainable reform.
Speaking on the purpose of the engagements, Aisha Hamman, Founder and Executive Director of Lift Africa Foundation, notes that the process is intended to “align institutions, surface operational gaps, and build a unified commitment ahead of the summit.”
The approach reflects the Foundation’s long-standing strategy of engaging institutions early, grounding reform conversations in evidence, and ensuring that summit outcomes translate into implementable actions.
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Positioning the Kano Gender Justice Summit
The Kano Gender Justice Summit is conceived as a reform-oriented convening that moves beyond dialogue toward coordinated institutional action. Preparatory consultations are a critical step in ensuring that summit commitments are realistic, measurable, and anchored within existing governance structures.
The summit will bring together:
• government officials
• religious and traditional leaders
• security and justice institutions
• civil society organisations
• youth and community networks
• media stakeholders
A central outcome of the summit will be the launch of the Kano Community Declaration for Protection & Justice—a multi-stakeholder accountability pact committing participating institutions to defined actions, timelines, and follow-up mechanisms.
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Lift Africa Foundation’s Approach
Lift Africa Foundation continues to advance a systems-based approach to gender justice reform—one that prioritises survivor protection, institutional accountability, and coordinated governance responses.
The ongoing consultations reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that the Kano Gender Justice Summit is not a standalone event, but part of a sustained reform process aimed at strengthening protection systems and justice pathways for women and girls across Kano State.