Group advocates urgent action to achieve gender parity in Nigeria

Plan International Nigeria, an independent development and humanitarian non-profit organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls, has called for immediate steps to be taken to achieve gender parity in the country.

The organisation’s Country Director, Charles Usie, stated this recently at the Gender and Inclusion Summit in Abuja, its Communications Advisor, Yunus Abdulhamid, made this known in a statement.

The two-day event was tagged “Reimagining Gender-Inclusive Pathways and Partnerships for Poverty Reduction.”

Grim forecast

Mr Usie cited the World Economic Forum’s forecast that it would take another 130 years to achieve gender parity globally, and noted that Nigeria’s situation might take four generations to achieve.

He said that despite numerous conferences and discussions on gender and inclusion, little action has been taken to address the issue.

Mr Usie announced that his organisation has taken a practical step by establishing the position of a shadow country director.

“We established the position of shadow country director of Plan International, who must be a young girl and who speaks and advocates for girl’s inclusion,” he said.

Meanwhile, on her part, the shadow country director, Wisdom Omata, emphasised that women and girls constitute half of the world’s population but still suffer abuse.

“Mercy, Karen, Justina, Uwa …these are not just fictional names,” she said.

“These are names of girls whose age ranges from 20 to 24 who in the past two years have been victims of sexual assaults in Nigeria.”

She made a strong appeal to policy makers to make the world a safe place for women and girls to thrive.

Earlier in his opening remarks, the Chairperson of the Policy Innovation Centre, Udeme Ufot, said the link between gender disparity and poverty was stark and needed to be tackled headlong with the right policies and innovations.

The conference, attended by top government officials, development partners, and civil society organisations, aims to address the multidimensional poverty in Nigeria and the link between gender inequality and poverty.

Gender parity in Nigeria

In Nigeria, gender equality remains a struggle. There is low representation of women in the leadership of many sectors including media and politics.

Women’s participation in politics is limited, with various challenges hindering their involvement.

The National Gender Policy of 35 per cent Affirmative Action aims to increase women’s participation in politics but its implementation has been slow.

Also, in the agriculture sector, women suffer limitation.

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According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), while women account for 70-80 per cent of agricultural labour and output in Nigeria, only 10 per cent of landowners in Nigeria are women, despite the 45-year-old Land Use Act that gives women equal rights to land ownership.

Nigerian women face significant barriers in entrepreneurship and education.