VP’s Remarks At The Women In Africa Initiative Webinar On 08/03/2021

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ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY, PROF. YEMI OSINBAJO, SAN, GCON, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA AT THE WOMEN IN AFRICA INITIATIVE WEBINAR, ABUJA ON THE 9TH OF MARCH, 2021

“Transforming ignorant and sexist attitudes that hold women back will definitely involve engaging influential, religious, additional community leaders and supporting progressive civil society organizations, as well as, empowering and training especially, female role models and teachers and improving enrollment and retention rates.”

“To talk to the question of female role models, I have very many ladies who work with me, whom I thought would be role models to them and two or three of them actually went over to speak to these girls in the schools in Maiduguri, in Northeast Nigeria and they were able to persuade them that the right way to go was to get educated and be like them, you know, like these ladies who were already of course accomplished and were married, had children, but were also able to take care of themselves and take care of their children and be reckoned with in society.”

PROTOCOLS

I’d like to thank you both for your work and your collaboration with the public, private & social sectors in Nigeria. As John said, MacArther Foundation was the first to support our presidential anti-corruption effort and have worked with us on several other government and human capital development initiatives and Hafsat, thank you for the invitation to participate in this conversation today. I think it’s fair to say that I have, a more than sentimental attachment to this very day, International Women’s Day, because it also happens to be my birthday, and also to say to Hafsat,  and the Women In Africa Initiative, you must not imagine that the irony of this all-male panel is lost on any of us who are here on this panel. We know that we men are being set up for some accountability and I think we’re already giving a reasonably good account of ourselves so far.

I must also bring you the warm, personal greetings of Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari on this International Women’s Day.  Incidentally, Mr President enjoys the distinction of the honour of the Champion of the #HeForShe Campaign in Nigeria, which was conferred on him a couple of years ago. Indeed, as a father of seven well-educated and confident daughters, he really does believe that he, more than anyone else, should be a passionate advocate of gender equality and so should I. I also have two daughters, Damilola & Kanyinsola, they’re both young adults and have been out of University for a while now and they’ve been entrepreneurs, even while they were in school, but more importantly, from the day that they were born, they could assume, that they would have equal legal, social and political status and rights as their brother and as any other male.

This is so because they were born to educated and modestly economically successful parents. I’m sure that that is the case for many of us here in this conversation, and many will have daughters in this particular webinar. Our daughters are educated or being educated and can, and will compete favourably with their male counterparts anywhere. They will aspire and can attain political leadership, by virtue of the privileges of and circumstances of their birth. They are positioned to break the glass ceilings in commerce and their profession and politics. But the story of the daughters of those of us who are here is not the story of a large number of girls in countries all over Africa and in particular in Nigeria.

Over 35% of girls on average are illiterate and illiteracy means that they will not find decent well-paying jobs, that they will in many cases, be married off early, many will be discriminated against in inheritance rights or punitive widowhood practices, they will work hardest on the farms and they would work long hours in the markets but will always earn less than men.

These historical deficits ensure that women will be underrepresented in leadership as well, whether that be business or political leadership or leadership in any of the sectors, almost invariably, they will be behind. But even the educated, will probably several times in their working lives, be subjected to one form of gender-based discrimination or the other. Many may even add to the growing statistics of victims of domestic violence. So for many generations, I think women have fought these manifestations of gender inequality, and in Nigeria and in Africa, in particular, this has been the case too. Over time, that struggle has been refined to the level of a right to gender equality and that notion that women and men should have the same legal, social, and political rights. It is this body of rights, which you know, is today described as Feminism.

But I think that something has changed in the past few years; women are now saying that the fight for gender equality is not just for women and girls alone. And I think that this is the right approach, it’s a fight for all of us, especially men. But the campaign is much more important in shaping the future.

Men are now being challenged to stand shoulder to shoulder with women in the struggle for gender equality. And I think we’re all learning that insisting on equal rights for women is an imperative of justice, and fairness; it is an entitlement, a debt which I think generations have owed to women and girls and not a gift.

I think the realization of the imperative of this notion is perhaps, the greatest leap of development in contemporary history. I do not mean in any way to demean any of what has happened in technology or elsewhere, but I think that a change, not just in-laws, but in mindsets and conventions, is perhaps one of the most dramatic things that have happened, especially in the last decade. Today, the theme: “Choose To Challenge” biases and misconceptions in favour of a more gender-inclusive world is a very apt one, but I’d like to suggest that the most effective challenge that can be mounted is the education of girls.

I think that that’s about the most effective thing that we could do and anyway from the point of view of the public sector, that’s absolutely the most important thing to do. There’s no question that this is the single most potent game-changer in the story. Not only does it provide options for economic empowerment for women, but it also ensures that their children will be educated, that they will not be married off too early, where there are attendant health and population implications.

President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, underscored this point, sometime in 2019, while speaking to Governors of the States, (for those of us who may not be familiar with the structure of the Nigerian State, we have semi-autonomous or almost autonomous states. It’s a Federation with the States and the States have responsibility for primary and secondary education. Although, of course, the Federal Government frequently chips in), he talked in particular about free and compulsory education, which by the way, is law in Nigeria. In fact, there’s a law; Compulsory Free Universal Basic Education Act which provides that every government in Nigeria shall provide free compulsory and universal basic education for every child of primary and junior secondary school age and it’s also a crime for any parent to keep his child or her child out of school for this period.

He went on to say that in his view when a government fails to provide schools, teachers, and teaching materials necessary for education, such a government is actually aiding and abetting that crime. I think it’s important that the law does not discriminate, as a matter of fact, the law expects that both boys and girls, especially at the primary level, will be given education compulsorily.

I think the enforcement of that particular legislation is one that we are challenged to do and to activate and it’s one which at the level of the Nigerian Economic Council, (a monthly meeting of Governors of various States which I have the privilege of chairing) we frequently monitor what is going on in education of children and in particular, education of girls and there are several initiatives around the education of girls, especially in the States where girl-child education is particularly disadvantaged.

Undoubtedly, improving access to education and ensuring that there is optic, requires more than just providing these decisions. As you can see, it is obviously more than just law, and it is more than just policy. There are normative factors involved in transforming cultural attitudes around the education of women. It’s about interacting directly with communities and ensuring that parents understand the value of educating their children, especially their daughters.

It is about ensuring that homes are also safe, that the apprehensions of parents and guardians are addressed, that the availability of safe and supportive learning environments for our girls exist, and then a country that is so ethnically and religiously diverse, this approach would differ in communities across the country, not just communities, but also across all sectors, all levels of the country. So, transforming ignorant and sexist attitudes that hold women back will definitely involve engaging influential, religious, additional community leaders and supporting progressive civil society organizations, as well as, empowering and training especially, female role models and teachers and improving enrollment and retention rates.

There’s a project that I’ve been working on with a group of people in Northeast Nigeria. It started off as a school for many of the young children who are dislocated on account of the problems in the Northeast. Now, this school has a fairly large number of girls; I think it’s just about half the number of girls and boys, but at some point, we discovered that the girls were saying that they wanted to go off to get married and many of them, of course, were under the age of 16. Many of them were saying that would like to get married because culturally, it’s the way to go.  This has been a dominant culture, and after a while, people start to think that at that age, they are left on the shelf. It was becoming a major concern.

To talk to the question of female role models, I have very many ladies who work with me, whom I thought would be role models to them and two or three of them actually went over to speak to these girls in the schools in Maiduguri, in Northeast Nigeria and they were able to persuade them that the right way to go was to get educated and be like them, you know, like these ladies who were already of course accomplished and were married, had children, but were also able to take care of themselves and take care of their children and be reckoned with in society.

It’s very important to have strong female role models, just as it is important to encourage the education of girls. But also, more importantly, to deconstruct these ideas that young women must be married, this is so, on account of culture and in some cases, on account of religious practices.

If we devoted our energies solely to this cause and that’s the education of girls, I think we will deal a decisive blow to this problem and dramatically in the process, reduce poverty and health risk.

The other point I’d like to make is the affirmative empowerment of women economically or otherwise. In my opinion, affirmative empowerment is as much about giving women the options as it is about giving them the means.

Our Social Investment Programmes, which is the largest of its kind, at least in Sub-Saharan Africa, focused deliberately on giving women more equal opportunities. 56% of the beneficiaries of what is called the Government Enterprise and Employment Programme, or about 1.5 million women have been empowered by our micro-credit schemes. The vast majority of those who benefit from the micro-credit schemes are actually women, 1.5 million of them in total now.

500,000 beneficiaries of the N-Power graduates, (our graduate scheme called N-Power) have 45% of female beneficiaries. And then for the Conditional Cash Transfers, which are cash transfers given to the very poor, 96% of beneficiaries are women.

Now the importance of this programme, the Conditional Cash Transfer, has demonstrated the resilience and focus of women. They receive a stipend every month of about N5,000. But what we’ve seen is that they continue to invest in their communities and grow their money.

As of December 2020, they had formed almost 35,000 savings groups in 27 States. I’m sure that some of us might have come across reports of women groups in Sokoto State buying fairly used vehicles to facilitate their movement to hospitals for childbirth. In some other States, they have improved primary school infrastructure for their children, or started small businesses with about 500,000 revolving loans, borrowed from savings groups.  These are women who get N5,000 a month as part of these social investments; they identify their own challenges and focus on how to address them.

In response to the economic shocks of the pandemic, (that’s a whole topic on its own,)  I would just mention some of what we’ve tried to do. With our payroll support for small businesses under the Economic Sustainability Plan, over 43% of beneficiaries were women, these are small businesses that were experiencing grave challenges on account of the lockdown. For those under the Artisans scheme of the ESP, 44% were women.

As you must already know the heads of these historic social investment programmes are women; Mrs. Maryam Uwais, who is the Special Advisor to the President On Social Investment Programmes and Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, the current Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management & Social Development, who handles all the Social Investment Programmes today. Both of them are women and no question at all, why it is that they are very focused on ensuring that they deliver, especially on the affirmative empowerment programmes.

So let me say as I conclude that if we’ve learned anything at all in the past decade, it is that ensuring education and empowerment of women is an existential issue for us in Nigeria and indeed in Africa. A child of a mother who can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of 5. For each additional school year, actually increases the earnings of a woman by 20%. Two-thirds fewer maternal deaths occur if mothers finish primary school.

If we hold down half the productive segment of our nation, then that is to say we hold down half the sky on account of culture, or other frankly outdated considerations! We are much poorer and much more deprived as a whole. So holding down women is holding down our societies. We do ourselves a favour by ensuring social and legal equality of women.

Thank you very much.