There is gross gender inequality in my country, Nigeria, stalling the progress and development of the great African nation. The gap between the male and female gender is very wide. A published academic article by Ekpe, D.E. et al., 2014, corroborates the fact that we have serious gender issues in Nigeria. Unfortunately, this situation is sustained by our culture, tradition and religion.
The issues are many, some of which are lack of education, decent job, income, ownership of properties, access to loans, positions in government, other levels of decision making etc. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) goal 5 speaks to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Besides, in my work as a public health professional, I understand that gender inequality is a social determinant of health, which impacts health negatively.
A member of one of the whatsapp groups I belong to shared the link to, the Sun news online, a Nigeria newspaper publication with the headline- FG plans special schools for married women. This sparked up a discussion in the group. I could not hold back, but had to share my work experience ten (10) years ago in Dutse, Jigawa State of Nigeria.
Before I started sharing my experience, I stated thus
The discussion thread continued thus
I will spare you all other discussions and focus on my response which is the reason for writing this post. My response began as seen above ...We conducted...This is the full text below.
We conducted a survey for a local non-governmental organisation (NGO)- Global Agenda for Total Emancipation (GATE), Nigeria in 2007. The project title was -GENDER PARTICIPATION AND ACTION IN THE 2007 GENERAL ELECTIONS. I was the state supervisor and had my assistant, who was helping to collect data from the field too. The project station was in Jigawa State. We were in Dutse for about a month visiting some local government areas, where we chose to collect data from by random sampling. Meetings were held and interviews were conducted with the leaders of political parties in the state including women leaders and the electorate
An important aspect of the project was when I visited Radio Jigawa, for a call in radio program. I wanted to hear the views of the indigens of Jigawa State about Nigeria having a female president. Uuugh..I knew the reactions I got that day. In fact, someone called in and told me never to mention female president again. At the completion of the project, before we left Dutse back to Abuja, we had debriefing meeting with all stakeholders of the project. It was a very important meeting that gathered together top notch decision makers like the Deputy Governor of Jigawa State (who represented the Governor himself), Secretary to the State Government of Jigawa State, leaders of all political parties, Chief Judge of Jigawa State, gentle men & ladies of the press. On that faithful day of the debriefing meeting, I presented the report of our research findings. A leader of one of the political parties, in response to my presentation, told me to go back and tell my organization and those who funded our project that GENDER EQUALITY WILL NOT WORK IN NIGERIA. He continued by saying that what we should be advocating for is EQUITY & NOT EQUALITY.
Ten (10) years down the line, I'm happy that this initiative is coming from Aisha Jummai Alhassan herself, a Muslim faithful and Minister of Women Affairs, who hails from Taraba State.
My work experience and even my personal experience as a Nigerian woman , which I hope to share another time, are cases of struggle for gender equality in Nigeria.