As Nigeria joins the remainder of the world to mark the 2025 Worldwide Girls’s Day (IWD), the Minister of Girls Affairs and Social Growth, Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, has recognized 4 main challenges going through Nigerian ladies.
Talking at a media briefing in Abuja on Thursday to flag off the IWD celebrations, Mrs Sulaiman-Ibrahim listed these challenges as authorized and coverage frameworks, financial empowerment, political illustration and management, and gender-based violence and social norms.
This yr’s IWD commemoration marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Motion adjudged probably the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing ladies’s rights.
2025 Worldwide Girls’s Day
The IWD anniversary is themed, “For ALL Girls and Women: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.”
This yr’s theme “requires motion that may unlock equal rights, energy and alternatives for all and a feminist future the place nobody is left behind,” the United Nations wrote on its web site.
The marketing campaign can be tagged ‘Speed up Motion,’ emphasising the urgency of attaining gender equality.
Challenges
Whereas Nigeria has made “important progress” by enacting gender-responsive legal guidelines such because the Violence Towards Individuals Prohibition Act (VAPP) and the Youngster Rights Act, a full implementation stays a problem, the minister stated.
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Mrs Sulaiman-Ibrahim famous that 35 out of 36 states have domesticated the VAPP Act, whereas 34 states have adopted the Youngster Rights Act. Nonetheless, she burdened that this isn’t sufficient.
“We want full compliance, efficient enforcement, and accountability to make sure that the rights enshrined in these legal guidelines are a lived actuality for each Nigerian girl and lady,” she stated.
Mrs Sulaiman-Ibrahim stated one other problem confronting Nigerian ladies is financial empowerment.
“Girls drive Nigeria’s casual economic system, proudly owning 41 per cent of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs),” she stated.
“Nonetheless, entry to finance, markets, and digital literacy stays a barrier to scaling their companies. Greater than 94 per cent of ladies nonetheless lack entry to formal credit score regardless of their confirmed skill to reinvest of their households and communities.
“We should shut the gender financing hole, increase alternatives in commerce, expertise, and digital expertise, and supply structured help for ladies entrepreneurs.”
The minister additionally hinted on the newest empowerment initiatives embarked upon by the ministry.
“Underneath Nigeria for Girls Mission Scale Upproject, which we simply commenced, we will probably be reaching a minimal of 4.5 million ladies nationwide to bridge the hole,” she stated.
“We additionally launched the MOWA-SARA initiative just lately, with the help of WEMA Financial institution. As we communicate at the moment, this talent growth programme is ongoing, and the goal is 500,000 ladies.”
The third challenge that Nigerian ladies encounter is gender-based violence and social norms, which should be decisively addressed, stated the minister.
She defined that greater than 30 per cent of Nigerian ladies between the ages of 15-49 have skilled bodily violence, and one in 4 ladies has been sexually abused earlier than their eighteenth birthday.
Current GBV circumstances
Mrs Sulaiman-Ibrahim cited current circumstances of gender-based violence, together with the deaths of Emrich Effanga in Cross River State, Mutiat Sholola in Ogun State, and Salome Adaidu in Nasarawa State.
She additionally talked about a mom of six, allegedly set ablaze by her husband in Anambra State, and a lady in Abuja whose fingers have been lower off by her supposed boyfriend.
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“These are stark reminders of the pressing have to maintain the declaration of a state of emergency on gender-based violence embarked upon in 2020 by Nigeria’s Governors Discussion board within the wake of the excessive variety of such circumstances throughout the lockdown of COVID-19,” she famous.
Additionally, ladies stay vastly underrepresented in decision-making areas.
“In our tenth Nationwide Meeting, solely 4 out of 109 Senators and 17 out of 360 Home of Representatives members are ladies, with 15 states missing any feminine illustration,” she stated.
“This stark imbalance just isn’t reflective of a progressive democracy. We should speed up efforts towards political inclusion, making certain that girls have a seat on the desk – not as tokens, however as equal companions in governance and growth.”
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