Why I am fighting for the girl child – Wife of Kogi Speaker
This year’s International Day of Girl Child marks 25 years of the Beijing Declaration and a yardstick for working towards empowering girl child and protecting their rights globally. International Day of Girl Child is a day set aside by the United Nations to celebrate the girl child. It holds every 11th day of October every year. This year’s theme ‘My voice, our equal future’ focuses on inclusion, gender quality and listening to what girls want, their dreams and aspirations. In her interaction with Kogi State chapter of Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), ZANIAB ESTHER KOLAWOLE, wife of Speaker of the Kogi State House of Assembly, pointed out, among other things, that the voice of girl child is always silenced. VICTORIA NNAKAIKE, our correspondent in Lokoja, brings the excerpt:
May we know your vision towards indigent girl child in your domain? “I have a vision to give hope to the hopeless. I have a plan to have an NGO (Building the Girl Child -BGC) to help the girl child that was what prompted me to celebrate the girl child in my constituency during the girl child Day Celebration.
What really is your drive towards such honourable cause?
There are lots of cases out there, that in one way or the other they have been accused. We try to advocate for them. That is one of the objectives of my vision. We give them money to start up something. There are lots of children that want to continue their education not that their parents do not have money but because they discriminate. They prefer to train the boy child than the girl child.
Our mission is to advocate for them at the home front and see how we can persuade their parents to support them and there are some their parents want them to go to school but there is no money to do that; we support them and see how far they could achieve their aim. And there are some of our girls that dropped out of school and believed that they can’t go further again and assumed that there is no hope; we give them hope.
We tell them they can still go back to school. I learnt of an old woman from Ghana that went back to school; that is still trending on social media. We tell them even though you are married or given birth to children you can still go back to school. I heard also about a woman who was an office assistant that went back to law school; she is now a barrister; age is just a number.
Like I said earlier on, it is not everybody that will go to school; some will go vocational. So, what we do, we help them to go to vocational training and we get equipment for them to start one business or the other.
Girls need to have a voice in every stage of life- in government, secular places of work. When you give them a voice they bring out their potentials. Girls are so talented; at time they are not allowed to choose courses of interest in higher institutions. Late Aritole is also a typical example of giving a girl child a free hand to choose her career. If her parents didn’t give her a free hand she wouldn’t have ended up being the first female Combatant pilot in Nigerian history. Give a voice to the girl child in doing so you see Ni
geria will go far, our local government areas will equally go far. Women have knowledge.
There are some people who think women’s rights or campaign for equality has to do with competing with their husbands at home. What do you think?
Looking at the adage that says ‘what a man can do, a woman can do even better’, it is good but let it not get into our heads in our homes. In Africa, we believe that men are the head of the family. We have to give due respect not minding our ranks or social status; we should just know that we have to be submissive to our husbands. And our husbands should not enslave us either. A lot of women out there are dying because of submission. A woman has to be submissive and the man has to show love to his wife because if the husband fails, she finds it difficult to submit. One woman died recently because of the trauma she was going through. The wife has a duty to submit and the husband has a greater duty to love. If the husband is not showing love to his wife, it will be hard for the woman to be submissive.
Husbands, love your wives to the point that you can die for them and naturally, love will flow. If you can defend her to death, you prefer that any evil thing that will happen to her should happen to you. Naturally, submission will flow. But if you are ill-treating her, you are not sensitive to her emotions, submission will not come. She might keep quiet, either she dies in silence and you become a widower or she packs out of the house and make you a wifeless man or some can do some things that I don’t want to mention here.
My advice to fathers and husbands is that they should not look down on their wives when they give birth to only females. We all know that girl child has more compassion than they boy child. When God gives you females, don’t think that is the end for you. That female child can take your name to places than you expected. Support your wives; don’t drive them out, take care of the girls and help in training them.
When your wives show interest in furthering their education, support them. When a woman has a vision don’t truncate it; help her to build it. If Ngozi Okonjo-iweala didn’t get support from both parents and husband, she would not have achieved her dream or be where she is today. We equally have other women who have excelled in their chosen endavours, but am using Okonjo-iweala as a case study.
But don’t you think that things are changing now as regards the treatment of girl child in society?
The way we are going now things are improving unlike in the olden days when a girl child was seen as a
kitchen material and of course, the material of the other room. But now things have changed; government is supporting us; they are trying. And we are doing all our best to support them academically and vocationally as we have come to know the value of the girl child. It is not everybody that will go to school. I think the girl child has a future and we have people out there to encourage them. The likes of Ngozi Okonjo-iweala have really encouraged us. If we can support the girl child, give hope to the hopeless girl, in the near future, we will see our girls becoming governors; some of them are senators already. One of the things I really appreciate about my governor and his dear wife, my principal, is that they are empowering women and girl child. Recently, I learnt that every local government area chairman in Kogi must have a female as vice chairperson; in no distant time we will soon have a female President.
Government and security agencies, need to beef up their plans; when a girl child complains about abuse, they should not to be ignored; they are also not to be ridiculed. Some parents would say ‘I don’t want it to leak out; it may tarnish my image’
How best do you think government can tackle the lingering problem og girl child molestation in society?
Mothers have a lot to do about the girl child. I think what we need to do is that we mothers have to come together and pray to God to take control. They must give the girl child a complete sex education. Tell them where to go and where not to go and again know when to send your child on an errand. I can’t send a girl child on an errand after 7pm and that is my rule in my own house. When they go to school they know where to be; when to go out at a particular time. Government and security agencies, need to beef up their plans; when a girl child complains about abuse, they should not to be ignored; they are also not to be ridiculed. Some parents would say ‘I don’t want it to leak out; it may tarnish my image’. When a girl child reports that something has been done to her, security agencies and government should take it up immediately; they should not entertain aiding and abating of the crime in question.
What are the major challenges you encounter in the empowerment of girl child in your area?
The major challenge so far has been that some people when you give them equipment, they sell it off and go back to their normal way of life. That is where we need to pray, at times, the devil, wouldn’t want somebody to be somebody even if they have someone to help them. A man can do nothing without the help of God.