To describe the event Ms Uzoma Okere experienced in the hands of some military 'gangsters' on Monday morning of November 3 on Muri Okunola Street, Victoria Island Lagos as despicable is stating the obvious.

The media has been awashed with the tragic news of how six hefty Naval men descended on the young lady to beat the daylight out of her and eventually stripped her naked for daring to keep her car on the road when the convoy of a Rear Admiral Harry Arogundade was blaring siren to wade through an usual close-hour traffic jam.

Uzoma's sin was that she failed to give way immediately for the convoy to pass through.

If the incident had ended at lashing of the victim with horse whip called 'koboko', the world outcry would still have been loud.

But for these men to have extended the violence against Uzoma to the extent of tearing off her dress to expose the very essence of her 'feminity' to public glare is a shame, a condemnable tragedy against Nigerian women.

Violence Against Women

It is of course a term technically used to collectively refer to violent acts that are primarily or exclusively committed against women globally.

The act of violence on women comes in various degrees but is commonly brutal and crude ranging from slavery to rape and assault and added more recently, women trafficking for prostitution.

Only very recently, precisely on October 24, Yakin Ert¸rk, United Nation's Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women in a address to the UN Assembly's third committee on social, humanitarian and culture stated, "In spite of considerable achievements, violence against women persists in every country as a pervasive and universal violation of human rights and a major impediment to achieving gender equality,"

Ert¸rk an independent United Nations human rights expert told the Committee how Women around the world continue to endure violence, abuse and discrimination and often have no recourse to justice.

According to her, "Unless serious injuries occur, domestic violence is by and large accepted as a normal aspect of private life by men and women alike and not acknowledged as a problem warranting public intervention,".

What does one say then about public violence against women?

Only recently in the country, two women were publicly flogged for alleged fornication.

17-year-old Bariya Ibrahim Magazu was lashed 100 strokes after it was discovered that she had conceived a child out of wedlock. The girl, who gave birth and was breast-feeding at the time of her caning, reportedly had no representation at the trial where she said she was impregnated by one of three middle-aged men with whom her father pressured her to have intercourse.

The second young Nigerian woman was also found guilty by a Sharia Court of engaging in pre-marital sex. Eighteen-year-old Attine Tanko was found guilty after the discovery that she was pregnant while unmarried.

Tanko's 23-year-old boyfriend, who was also flogged 100 times and is currently sentenced to jail time, is the father. Though she is yet to give birth, the court has allowed the young woman to wean the baby for up to two years after she gives birth, but she will receive the punishment of 100 lashes after that time.

Woman battery is not new in Nigeria and it is known to be a phenomenon common especially among certain men whose nature of work has to do with engaging force such as military men.

This probably accounts for the record of rape, beating and so on that is daily being experienced by women of the Niger-Delta region when military personnel posted to keep peace in the battle-ravaged allegedly descend on them and brutalise their 'feminity'.

Although Nigeria has no official record of violence against women but it is estimated that one in every 10 Nigerian women is a victim of violence.

The figure comes from the NGO called Project Alert on Violence against Women. It includes wife battery, female child abuse, and intimate murders - that is, killings done by husbands or boyfriends. There is no record yet of such battering in public as experienced by Uzoma, Bariya and Attine in recent times.

UN record, has it that every year, at least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime - with the abuser usually someone known to her.

For women aged 15 to 44 years, violence is a major cause of death and disability.

The United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women (1993) identified three main areas where violence against women occurs, namely in the family, the general community, and perpetrated or condoned by the state, clarifying that such violence can take physical, sexual and psychological forms. Policy documents such as the Beijing Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), the outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly of June 2000, entitled "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the 21st century", and various other United Nations resolutions and outcomes elaborated further the forms of violence against women and the sites where it takes place, and actions to combat and prevent its occurrence.

These documents also highlighted the ways in which violence against women intersects with, and impacts on, other aspects of women's well-being and their enjoyment of their human rights.

There is no doubt that there is an urgent need to domesticate the essence of all laws against violence against women of which the Nigerian state is a signatory to, else Nigerian women would continue to experience unending violence against their dignity.

The world awaits the outcome of the probe ordered by President Umar Yar'Adua into the incident. It would also be interesting to know how the men involved in the violent act treat their wives, girlfriends, daughters, sisters, mothers and nieces in the face of provocation.