The Honourable Minister of Women Affairs, Barrister Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye and Directors of the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs have emerged from a brainstorming session on the mandates of the ministry and resolve on innovative and sustainable approach to the implementation of the mandates to minimize costs and get more value to Nigerian women, children and the nation.
At a meeting held on Monday, 25th September, 2023 at the Conference Room of the Minister on the 5th Floor of the Ministry, the joint meeting resolved to jettison some of the previous ways of going about the mandates of the ministry.
The minister and the directors have opted to establish sanitary production centres to train students on practical production. The previous approach has been to distribute some sanitary pads on occasions when the ministry’s staff visit schools. The ministry’s management resolved further to assist in marketing excess products for the benefit of the student producers.
Further, the ministry has jettisoned distribution of gas cylinders mounted with burners to rural women because there have been complaints about the inability of beneficiaries to refill the gas cylinders when they are used up.
Instead of the gas cylinders and burners, the management of the ministry has decided on a more cost-effective and sustainable distribution of charcoal burners and bio-gas/clean stoves. The cost effectiveness and sustainability of the latter choice lie in the cost of one gas cylinder/burner buying many units of charcoal burners and bio-gas/clean stoves. With a little budget, the ministry can now reach many more rural women beneficiaries with charcoal burners and bio-gas/clean stoves.
The management of the ministry has also chosen to resuscitate many of her redundant properties across the nation and, especially, the creche starting with the ones in Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
There is also the resolve to encourage all women groups to form cooperatives and register with the Ministry for skills development, revolving loans and empowerment with machines and equipment which can boost production, livelihoods of women and enhance nation building.
“The women cooperatives will further be assisted to distribute and market their increased products through a collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment (FMITI), Traders’ Associations as well as other International Organizations which are partners of the ministry in this venture.
The ministry which has been bothered with the increased issues of violence against persons, gender-based violence (GBV), sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), female genital mutilation (FGM), and violence against children in particular, has resolved in conjunction with the Honourable Minister of Justice/Attorney General of the Federation, Governors’ Forum and the Chief Justice of the Federation to establish mobile courts for quick dispensation of justice for the survival of the voiceless in the society. This, the management said, will be preceded by massive awareness creation for perpetrators to desist from these scourges of women and children and all the programmes have to be accomplished within the first 100 days of the minister in office.
In line with the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR’s Renewed Hope Agenda, the management of the women affairs ministry rose from their meeting, resolved to work to allow the poor to breathe and not to be suffocated.