Nigeria’s Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo has identified the education and empowerment of women as critical strategies in the development of society, describing it as existential issue for Nigeria and the rest of Africa.
Spokesman to the Vice President, Laolu Akande, said in a release that Prof. Osinbajo stated this on Monday in a keynote address at a webinar organized by Women In Africa (WIA) in collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation to mark the 2021 International Women’s Day.
The vice president said holding women down means holding societies down.
Anchoring his contributions on the theme of the 2021 celebrations “Choose to challenge”, the Vice President noted that “a child of a mother who can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of five.
“Each additional school year increases a woman’s earning by 20%; 2/3 less maternal deaths if mothers finish primary school.
“If we hold down half of the productive segment of our nation on account of culture or other frankly outdated considerations, we are much poorer and much more deprived as a whole.
“We do ourselves a favour by ensuring social and legal equality of women.”
Stereotypes against women in Africa/developing countries
The Vice President said “for many generations, women have fought these manifestations of gender inequality.
Over time the struggle has been refined to the level of a right to gender equality.
The notion that women and men should have the same legal, social and political rights is the public law basis for Feminism. But something has changed in the past few years.”
Vice President Osinbajo highlighted the gains of improving women participation in governance and other aspects of society, pointing out that “women are now saying that the fight for gender equality is not for women and girls alone, it is also a fight for all fair minded and just men who believe that men and women must have equal rights.”
Campaign for gender equality
Osinbajo described the reinvigorated campaign for gender equality as the greatest leap of development in contemporary history.
“The campaign is much more important in shaping the future. Men are now being challenged to stand shoulder to shoulder with women in the struggle for gender equality.
They are learning that insisting on equal rights for women is an imperative of justice and fairness, an entitlement, a debt owed to women and girls not a gift”, he said.
The vice president who advocated for a change not just in laws but in mindsets and conventions, called everyone to ‘Choose to Challenge’ biases and misconceptions in favour of a more gender inclusive world.
“But I would like to suggest that the most effective challenge that can be mounted is the education of girls.
There is no question that this is the single most potent game changer in this story.
Not only does it provide options for economic empowerment for women but it also ensures that their own children will be educated, that they will not be married off too early with the attendant health and population implications”, he added.
Women education and empowerment
The Vice President said that the idea of empowering and ensuring the education of women is receiving support at the highest level of governance in Nigeria, citing a strong call from President Buhari to governors in 2019 as a worthy example.
Prof. Osinbajo said: “the President underscored this point while speaking to governors at the (second term) inauguration of the NEC on June 20, 2019, when he reminded them that they have the responsibility for primary and secondary education and for ensuring that primary education is free and compulsory. Section 2 of the Compulsory Free Universal Basic Education Act provides that every Government in Nigeria shall provide free, compulsory and universal basic education for every child of primary and junior secondary school age.”
He added that the Buhari administration has in most of its programmes given priority to women and other vulnerable groups in the society.
Social Investment Programme
The vice president reeled out specific programmes that had women at the fore and said the Social Investment Programme focused deliberately on giving women more equal opportunities.
According to him, 56% of beneficiaries of the Government Empowerment and Enterprise Programme or 1.5 million women have been empowered by the ‘TraderMoni’ and ‘MarketMoni’ micro credit schemes.
“Of the 500,000 beneficiaries of the N-power graduate employment scheme, over 45% of beneficiaries are female. For the Conditional Cash Transfers 96% of beneficiaries are women.
“This programme in particular has demonstrated the resilience and focus of the women who have been receiving the N5,000 monthly stipend. How they have continued to invest in their’ communities and grow their money. As at December 2020, they had formed almost 35,000 savings groups in 27 states”, he said.
Other speakers at the event include President of the MacArthur Foundation, Mr John Palfrey, CEO of AXA Africa, Hassan El-Shabrawishi, President of Women In Africa, Hafsat Abiola, who moderated the discussion, among others.
Nneka Ukachukwu
