Nigeria’s Women Affairs Minister, Mrs Pauline Tallen has called for an end to gender inequality in the country.
The Minister made the call during the Women National Business Agenda Policy Dialogue in Abuja, the nation’s capital with the theme “Women leadership and economic equality with a hashtag #chose to challenge.”
Mrs Tallen identified women’s empowerment and engagement in entrepreneurship activities as key to attaining economic prosperity.
She said the assumptions that women are less inclined to secure financial aid from funding institutions to grow their businesses led the Women affairs Ministry and other development partners in the country to develop supportive environments for women-led businesses.
This, the Minister noted that it is done through the setting up and strengthening of existing women entrepreneurs’ associations in different sectors.
“Some of these laudable interventions includes the Women’s Fund for economic empowerment (WOFEE) implemented in collaboration with the bank of Agriculture (BoA), the business fund for women (BODFOW) in collaboration with the bank of industry (BoI) to provide soft loan for female entrepreneurs as well as the national women for empowerment fund (NAWEF) and the government enterprise and economic empowerment program (GEEP) are targeted at supporting grassroots women operating informal businesses by providing soft loan to scale up their businesses.” The Minister explained.
Mrs Tallen tasked the Women business forum to continue to be innovative and support one another to ensure that no one is left behind.
She said, “In all of this collaboration is key. We can only collaborate if we know our partners, which is why we are calling on all our partners to submit a comprehensive list of their members’ profiles for inclusion into the Ministry’s Database as we work towards producing a compendium of Women in all sectors of the Nigerian economy. The idea is to be able to plan strategic interventions for all our women in different fields.” The Minister noted.
The Coordinator of the women National Business Agenda Policy Dialogue of Nigeria Mrs Modupe Oyekunle Called on the Nigerian government to declare a state of emergency on security in order to save lives and protect businesses for economic growth.
“Sometimes when you listen to the news it appears as if you are watching a movie like is not really happening and is getting closer, you know, before it’s a bit far but now is closer and it’s not only in the north or in the suburbs it’s really coming and it’s affecting businesses, it’s affecting the entire Agricultural value chain and road transportation.” Mrs Modupe said.
She also called for gender equality, access to finance for women to be able to secure the soft loan for business, infrastructural development and adequate power supply in the country.
The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu represented by the assistant inspector General of police Aisha Abubakar, who responded on some security issues said the police is doing their best in maintaining law and order.
She said, “Security is every body’s businesses, everybody must put all hands on deck to work with the police and all the security agencies to ensure that bring about the security of the country for everyone to go about their lawful businesses.”
Other participants made contributions via zoom on the need to support Nigerian women for economic development.
PIAK
