Joycee Awojoodu

Today is an important day in Abuja, as the National Gender Policy Dialogue in Nigeria is taking place at the Sheraton Hotel. It’s nice to see a gender imbalance in the favor of women for once. The men are definitely outnumbered! Truth is, that we need more Champions of Change in Men. Men who will create the policies to ensure gender equality and empowerment of women. The event has been very well organized by The World Bank and DFID with several dignitaries present and dropping compelling statements and statistics moving the audience to take action. The Honorable Ministers of Women Affairs, and Finance represented the Federal Ececutive Council and informed us that the FEC is currently 32%, the highest percentage or women under any President. His Excellency Goodluck Ebele Jonathon has doubled the percentage of women in cabinet in comparison to the previous regime, and that’s commendable but we aren’t there yet. Both ministers as well as the Senate Committee Chair in Women Affairs, Sen. Helen Esuene shared captivating remarks focused on the necessity of empowering women in Nigeria. “A country will fall behind if it doesn’t see it’s girls and women as a source of growth,” said with conviction by Dr. Ngozio Okonjo-Iweala ( Nigeria’s Minister of a Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy). She furthere elaborated that “if empowering women is smart economics, it’s even smarter economics to empower girls.” I totally agree with the Honorable Minister, empowering females should begin when they are young, reorientation is more successful when one is still a child.

I was saddened by several sobering statistics shared, such as “15% of women in Nigeria have bank accounts’ and only 4% of Nigerian girls in the north go to school.” In this day and age that is absurd! The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi asserted that the CBN is working to ensure that more women climb the ranks of promotion and become directors, that’s within one government agency, we need several more to follow suit.

The reality is, in a country where 80.2 million girls and women constitute a major portion of the population it is high time that we make gender policy a priority. I have many ideas about how one can get involved on a day to day basis. My first suggestion is mentoring. “It is only by helping other women that we can be better women.”