HOME FRONT Women’s Day: No women empowerment, no success

Mrs. Angela Ajala is the National President of the African Women Entrepreneurship Programme (AWEP). In this interview, she speaks on the “Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women’s Lives” theme of the 2018 International Women’s Day (IWD).

The theme of the 2018 IWD is “Time is Now: Rural and Urban Activists Transforming Women’s Lives”, what are you doing to transform women’s lives?

Transformation of women is a work in progress in Nigeria. Using AWEP as example, members are working in different industries, from agriculture to fashion, processing, to other services. The mandate is that if a web member is into decoration, Asho oke for instance, her target is to make sure that the women that are producing for her are taught the qualitative ways. This is because you need to produce items that are of high quality. So, if you don’t train those under you, the output you will get will be very different.

Therefore, what our members are doing now is to take a cluster of the rural women they are working with to make sure they teach them how to do things rightly.

We are represented in the six zones where we have our members in all the states and we are carrying women along in the area of agriculture, fashion, service delivery and so on.

Like in agriculture, women are put into clusters of 10 in cooperatives for the FADAMA project whereby they are going to be working with at least 1000 rural women to help with the development of that project.

We also look at the area of health. Part of what we teach them are basic hygiene, financial literacy and others.

In the North East, we are looking at production of sorghum that would be handled by these women. And recently, we did some mapping in conjunction with the American Embassy for female entrepreneurs in the North so that we can see who is who and what they are doing.

100,000 women have been reached through the project. Now we want to analyse that data by looking at the 100,000 women to know those in micro businesses; those that have no structured business, those that have informal businesses and how we can begin to formalise their businesses. The data analyses will also help us to identify those that are in the villages picking shea butter nuts and we want to ask our women in shea butter business to begin to work with them and the processing and do all that.

Without empowering the women; especially the rural ones who are doing the bulk of the job, we cannot succeed.

Therefore, it is in our interest to speak out for them, train and bring them along by meeting their needs and also enter their realities.

We check their health because it is only a healthy woman that can be productive. If a woman is not healthy, how can she be productive?

We also educate them on how to participate in decision making processes.

Now we are going into politics; we want to go round educating them on the power of their vote and it is important they vote the right people.

How are women groups tackling the problem of nonaccess to healthcare services in Nigeria?

Again, I think we are not holding our political office holders accountable enough. All area councils are governed by chairmen and each area council has wards. I don’t think we are holding them accountable and holding roundtables with them to know how many wards are within their area councils, ask them of social amenities in their councils.

However, the irony is that the councils will also tell you they have issue of funds not released to them thereby making them to fight for their own autonomy that will give them funds directly and not through any authority.

What are you telling women as the 2018 IWD is celebrated?

We are telling women this year to be more active in political participation than before. If your voice is not heard, change cannot happen to you. You cannot sit in your sitting and bedrooms and expect change to come. Change can only come through policies and advocacy.

For example, if 50 of us decide to join a political party and begin to attend its meetings when they want to take decisions that are not in the interest of the people and then 50 people stand against such decisions, they will think twice.

Though not everybody will be a politician, not everybody will be voted into office, but your voice will count where critical decisions are being made.

Women must press for political participation. Let’s not keep quiet again but be actively involved.