The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Pauline Tallen, said the Sex Offender Register will be fully implemented to protect girls and women from sexual abuse in Nigeria.

She gave this assurance while taking a tour to the National Centre for Women Development (NCWD), in Abuja.

The Minister who lamented the rising cases of women abuse in the country, held an interactive session with members of staff of the centre where she emphasised that any sex offender found, will face the wrath of the law.

She commended the Ministry of Education for its clear warning that, any professor, lecturer or person that messes with the life of any girl, would be severely dealt with.

Tallen urged the centre to collaborate with the National Bureau of Statistics to gather data on women which would aid in the planning and execution of projects that would empower more women.

The Director-General NCWD, Mary Ekpere-Eta, said the centre plans to establish Zonal training centres in all the six-geopolitical zones to build the capacity of rural women in the country as establishing the zonal offices, would enable the centre reach out to more women in all the local government areas. It would also increase the number of beneficiaries of various skills acquisition, as well as, reduce the cost implications of training.

Speaking further, the DG said, the zonal offices would also aid supervision of women centres in the 774 local government areas in the country which would enable most of the woman meet their mandates, as inadequate supervision has contributed to the failure of most of them not meeting up.

“The zonal offices will make it easy to get to the women in the grassroots, so instead of bringing them to Abuja, we will assemble them in the zones or the Zonal officers can just go to the local governments to do the training, which will be cheaper, easier to monitor and supervise, We are searching forunused Federal Government properties as zonal offices, we will just renovate and take off from theres “. She said.

The NCWD Boss, however, urged women to participate in any of the skills acquisition exercises that would provide them with alternative source of income and develop their capacity