Immediate steps should be taken for the inclusion of women to achieve gender parity in Nigeria and beyond to avoid a tortuous distance of an average of 130 years, country director of Plan International Nigeria, Charles Usie, has advised.
He spoke at the opening of the Gender and Inclusion Summit organised by the Policy Innovation Center in Abuja on Wednesday 4th September 2024.
Citing the World Economic Forum which forecasts that it will take another 130 years to achieve gender parity in the world, he said the Nigeria case is probably worse and that it might take four generations to achieve.
Usie, who spoke alongside his shadow country director; Miss Wisdom Omata, lamented that at every public space and conference, tonnes of knowledge is shared on the way forward on gender and inclusion but with little action.
To take a practical step approach, he said: "I established the position of a shadow country director of Plan International, who must be a young girl and who speaks and advocate for girl's inclusion."
Picking up from where Mr. Usie stopped, the shadow country director, said "Women and girls are of the world" and it was incumbent on every stakeholder to make the world a safe place for them to thrive."
While noting that women and girls constitute half of the world's population, she lamented that they still suffer mistreatment. "Mercy, Karen, Justina, Uwa ...these are not just fictional names. 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."
Wisdom made a strong appeal to "duty bearers, stakeholders, government officials, private individuals, development practitioners, to please make it a point of duty for girls and women to be safe," saying "We cannot imagine gender inclusiveness and poverty reduction in a world that is not safe for girls."
Earlier in his opening remarks, the chairperson of the Policy Innovation Centre, Udeme Ufot, said the theme of the conference was Reimagining Gender-Inclusive Pathways and Partnerships for Poverty Reduction with emphasis on the multidimensional poverty in the country despite economic growth.
He said the link between gender inequality and poverty was stark and needed to be tackled headlong with the right policies and innovations.
The two-day conference is being attended by top government officials including ministers, lawmakers, development partners, civil society organisations, youth champions, and media practitioners.
