Highlights of International Women’s Day 2024 in Nigeria: Initiatives, Advocacy, and Controversies
Gender advocates said they prefer grants to loans, noting that unpaid loans give sleepless nights to women.
Gender Matters across Nigeria: March Edition
The 8th of March, and, in fact, the whole of March, is set aside globally to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) and the Nigerian government took advantage to launch various initiatives aimed at inspiring inclusion as the theme for this year’s celebration dictates.
With women’s labour force participation rate in Nigeria put at 49.4 per cent according to the National Bureau of Statistics, while men’s is 56 per cent, gender advocates say the situation indicates a gender gap.
“Women are overrepresented in low-paying jobs and the informal sector and have limited access to credit, economic decision-making roles, and other financial services,” the advocates said.
During the IWD celebration, President Bola Tinubu said his administration recognises Nigerian women as “pillars of wealth and power.”
Represented by the the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume, Mr Tinubu spoke at the unveiling of the Nigeria for Women Programme in Abuja, to commemorate the 2024 edition of the IWD.
The president acknowledged the women’s “indispensable contributions to the nation’s progress,” saying: “My administration is committed to Nigerian women, and this is reflected in my policies.”
The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye, echoed the call for support for President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, She said her ministry distributed essential resources and innovative tools like fish grilling machines and rice processing machines to women in Anambra, Kano, Rivers, Imo, Lagos, Oyo, Katsina, Gombe, Kebbi, Adamawa, Ebonyi, Niger, Bayelsa, Benue, and Jigawa.
The initiative, she said, is to empower women across the various beneficiary states.
The minister also unveiled plans for an e-market portal to showcase women’s entrepreneurial endeavours, providing a platform for economic empowerment and visibility.
Meanwhile, apart from the initiatives enumerated by the minister, the Director General of the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), Charles Odili, said women who own Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) will benefit from a N5 billion loan to boost their businesses.
Mr Odili spoke at an event organised by the Office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Women Affairs with support from the development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC) to mark the IWD in Abuja.
“Women can now access the money at single digit and zero collateral. It means that you can get as little as N250,000; so as much as N2.5 million for working capital, workspace, procurement, and equipment,” he said.
But the women said they prefer grants to loans, noting that unpaid loans give sleepless nights to women.
The Coordinator of the dRPC, Ruth Agbo, said “Rolling out loans at a time when the economy is not doing well will not solve any problem.”
At the National Assembly, the House of Representatives has passed for a second reading a bill seeking to allow widows and widowers to take leave with full pay to mourn their deceased spouses.
Sponsored by Saidu Abdullahi (APC, Niger), the bill seeks to grant five months of leave with pay to widows and a month with pay to widowers to allow them to mourn their departed partners.
Meanwhile, as part of the activities to mark “Women’s Month,” gender advocates and civil societies filed out across major cities in Nigeria to protest what they described as the unjust trial of a mother of four, Chioma Okoli, whose review of a tomato puree online has now led to what the protesters described as harassment by the tomato company.
The women in their hundreds stormed the Erisco Foods factory in Lagos.
Meanwhile, March did not go without its drama around gender issues as the popular crossdresser, Idris Okunneye, known as Bobrisky, won the best dressed female award at the premiere of a movie titled: “Ajakaku”.
What the moviemaker, Eniola Ajao, planned as a marketing stunt soon became a big controversy and the noise over it soon dwarfed the popularity targeted for the movie.
Habeeb Okikiola, a controversial hip-hop artist renowned for his stage name “Portable,” was the first to stir controversy when he slammed the organisers of the event for awarding a transgender “instead of many beautiful women who graced the event.”
Portable later released a diss track targeted at him.
The controversy led to the withdrawal of the award from Bobrisky and the eventual announcement of two new winners.
