Akin Fadeyi Foundation holds ‘What Women Can Do’ discuss
By Abimbola Mohammed
Akin Fadeyi Foundation (AFF), Nigeria’s foremost public accountability non-profit organisation, held a media conversation on gender inclusive governance with the theme: “What Women Can Do”.
The insightful conversation explored how leadership would be a lot more impactful when women are empowered to act as equal stakeholders in national development.
The virtual event featured Amaechi Ogbonna as the lead speaker, Akin Fadeyi, Executive Director, Akin Fadeyi Foundation as the host, Cynthia Areh of Arise TV as Moderator, Mr. Simon Kolawole, Publisher, Cable Newspaper, Kate Henshaw, actress, and public affairs commentator, alongside women leaders and other distinguished participants.
Speaking at the media conversation, Mr. Akin Fadeyi, said, “Why are women in Nigeria taking the backstage, what happened to the vibrant strong culture of political participation by Nigerian women? Why is it that from 1999 till date when we have one hundred and nine houses of representative members we’ll have just three women in the house and at the senate, we’ll have just eight women? Why is it that Nigeria signed affirmative action at the United Nations but the Nigerian government sued against it? Four things we should identify here: The growing voice of women in community work from various fairs of the country, there has to be an intentional wiliness of cultural restriction in our conception of what defines women into political participation and policy friendly.
“There is a need for expansion of activism of women organisations supporting increased participation of women in politics. We have to agree now; women should be allowed to take economic roles and shouldn’t bear the pain of weaker vessels”.
Lending his voice Mr. Simon Kolawole who is also the Board Chairman, Akin Fadeyi Foundation noted that looking at what is happening in the political realm; Nigerians shouldn’t get discouraged by what they see because it is as if when we take one step forward in terms of gender inclusion we take several steps backward.
“That is why this conversation is very important so that we can begin to escalate the discussion so that those who are in the power can act and do things better. We need to continue to speak collectively to their conscience and put them on this spot so that they realise that things shouldn’t be handled the way they are being done now.”
“It is quite sad that when many developed countries are already talking about gender parity and gender equity, we in Nigeria are still discussing gender inclusion. Especially in the political space when we look at the presidential race, there is no single woman as the presidential candidate compared to the last presidential election when we had five candidates although some of them withdrew from the race.”
He urged the women in Nigeria not to give up participating in politics even though the resources and structure may not be readily available.
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