By Tobias Lengnan Dapam
As women around the world celebrate International Women’s Day, the federal government and Save the Children International (SCI), Nigeria, harped on the need for sustainable development for women.
Specifically, the federal government called on partners and other donor agencies to integrate sustainable empowerment components into every program designed to improve the welfare of Nigerian women and other vulnerable persons.
The Minister of Women Affairs, Barr Uju Kennedy Ohanenye at the celebration of women’s day in Abuja on Friday, themed: “Count Her In: Accelerating Gender Equality and Women Empowerment”, recalled that women and children constitute almost 70 percent of the population.
The Minister affirmed that “any form of funding from development partners and other donor agencies which lacks sustainable empowerment component for women, cannot make any positive impact on women considering the number of women and children we have in the country.
“Trainings and advocacies are necessary for any initiative but you cannot continue trainings and advocacies through the years while the people whom the trainings are meant for languish in poverty and lack basic needs of life such as quality health care and other necessities that will upscale their standard of living, Nigerians have suffered enough and its high time we changed the way and manner we negotiate some these grants and funding from our foreign partners because we understand our own peculiarities better”.
The event also included formal unveiling of the Nigeria For Women programs which included the E-Market Portal, Integrity Brigade, Women Help Line and other initiatives.
Barr Uju emphasized that the Ministry under her watch, deliberately designed the programs to address some of the peculiar challenges confronting the average Nigerian woman, adding that with the endorsement of President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and support of other Nigerians, these programs will no doubt, provide the required boost for the nation’s socio-economic growth.
“That is why the thrust for this year’s international women’s day emphasizes the need for inclusion of women through empowerment and gender equality to ensure national growth, we may not make the desired impact as a nation if women are not carried along right from the grassroots and that is why some of our programs in the Ministry are grassroot-driven to provide the opportunity for the peasant women in the village to reap the dividends from farming and most of our training programs will be pushed down to the rural dwellers”
On his part, the Director, Advocacy, Campaign, Communication and Media of SCI, Mr. Amanuel Mamo said achieving gender equality, women’s empowerment and
women’s well-being in all aspects of life is more crucial than
ever before “if we want to create prosperous economies,
peaceful nations and a healthy planet.
“Promoting women’s economic empowerment in a world
where gender inequality is on the rise begins with acknowledging the impact of investments in women and girls as individuals.
“Acknowledging women and girl’s rights as human rights is the first step in fostering gender equality.
In 2023, Save the Children reached close to 25 million
children and household members (24% directly and 76%
indirectly) in Nigeria. Of the more than 6 million participants
reached directly, 38% were children and 64% were girls. Of
the 25 million reached directly and indirectly, 53% were
children. Currently our programmes in Nigeria covers both humanitarian response and development programmes and
include multi-thematic programmes in Child Protection,
Education, Health, WASH & Nutrition, and Child Rights
Governance.
“The Save the Children Nigeria Country Office has the organisation’s largest scale Humanitarian Emergency and Refugee Response programming in the region.
In many countries where national investment on women and
girls is insignificant or unavailable, there are huge gender
equality gaps, socio-economic insecurity challenges that the
women and girls are facing today, including early, child and
forced marriages, violence, abuse, and trafficking, among
others.
“Child marriage is one of the most grievous forms of violence
perpetrated against girls. It is a human rights violation and a
form of Gender Based Violence. Forms of Violence Against
Children are – Physical, Sexual, Emotional – Child Marriage
is all of these 3 combined.
It is estimated that 2 in every 5 women were married as
children in Nigeria.
Investing on children, girls, is investing in the women
tomorrow. The level of women empowerment tomorrow,
the level of financial liberty of women tomorrow, depends
on how and what we invest on the girl child today.”
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