Nkechi Ikpeazu, wife of the Abia State governor, has said that this year’s celebration of International Women’s Day was with the mixed feelings of joy and disappointment in Nigeria.
Ikpeazu, who stated this in Umuahia, the Abia State capital during the celebration of IWD, expressed disappointment over the NASS failure to rise to the occasion and write its name in gold.
“We are disappointed at the National Assembly for failing to rise to the occasion and write its name in gold. By not passing the pro-women bills last week Tuesday, the National Assembly has attempted to set the Nigerian woman back by several decades.
“I have taken a critical look at the public service system and I have often asked myself how is it that women can strenuously climb through the career ladder to the top and become permanent secretaries, heads of agencies, chief judges, and the likes. In the world of corporate business, economy, the professions and women are frontliners.
It is amazing that the most influential Nigerian on the global scene at the moment is a woman, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala,” she noted.
The Abia first lady said in spite of these, the realms of local and national politics have remained beyond the reach of women adding that “over the past 16 years, we have seen political roles “bequeathed” or “concessioned” to women dwindle. The story kept getting unpalatable until the recent action of the National Assembly last week.”
She however said that women would not be not be deterred, but would continue with negotiations, dialogue and advocacy to press home their demands for fairer treatment.
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“Nonetheless, in Abia State, against the backdrop of traditional stereotypes, we are leading effort to instigate change positively and break the gender bias.
“We are currently working on a Gender Policy for Abia State. With support from UNFPA its development has reached 80 percent. We hope that its introduction in our state will help women get better access to relevant platforms and opportunity in life without the bias of gender.”
She disclosed that she had committed some energy to fight to end GBV, especially Violence Against Women and Girls in Abia State by putting in place sustainable state-wide mechanism to respond and mitigate gender based violence whenever it occurs.
“This is done in the realization that GBV is an intricate expression of gender bias. The recent Award from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth Development agency, the Westminster Foundation is a testimony to what we have done.
“On legislation, we have our VAPP Law and we are disseminating it. We also have three other important bills that our House of Assembly is working on including Obnoxious Widowhood Practices Bill, the Equal Opportunities Bill, a review of the Child Rights Law, among others.
Some of these laws including the VAPP, had been before the House for over four years and necessitated me going to interface with the lawmakers twice, where I was given the very rarest privilege of addressing a full plenary session on the floor of House. This has yielded huge results as the lawmakers have sped up process of passing it.
“We have held several leadership conferences, women conferences, young girls’ conferences to mobilize and instigate change in orientation and perception for our women, young, old, able-bodied or physically challenged.
“Particularly, we are trying to inspire leadership, entrepreneurship, and intellectual adventures for our young girls in the area of science, technology, engineering and ICT because we are mindful that the emancipation we want may not come in our generation, so we have to prepare our young to create the change,” she hinted.
The Abia first lady further said, “In Abia we also have a very strong system of economically empowering women with viable business ideas. We inject funds and other inputs into their business. Through the AWADEC Loan scheme, we have targeted about 500 women with loans that are improving their businesses. This is because we believe that economic empowerment of women is one way to break the gender bias.
“A great area of concern for me is that women themselves often form a large chunk of opposition to the success of their fellow women. This becomes more pronounced when women are aspiring for public or elective office.
Recently, I have called out women in Abia State to become more politically active ahead of the 2023 general elections. I have held two town hall meetings in the past three weeks to address the issues and get collective commitment from the women of Abia to work to install women in public offices through the ballot box.
Another task is to engage with men folks to collaboratively support gender mainstreaming and balancing. I have been engaging with stakeholders, house of Assembly, and the political party. We are advocating and demanding for greater access for women. Notwithstanding the unfortunate setback at the National Assembly last week, we shall continue to press and to demand better treatment from men. We will not stop until we break the bias.”
Ikpeazu observed that the road to attaining gender equity requires sacrifices from all the players including the men folks, adding that they must make spaces for women at the table.
