Amina Salihu

Gender has to be looked at as smart economics, because a lot of the time people think it is just to push for justice. So, it becomes a bit more difficult to convince policy makers, especially men who do not have this women’s liberation reality because they are not women and do not understand why they need to plan with women or look out for them. Even to reach your own development targets, you need women because they are the ones who would raise the children that you are looking at as the future human resources; they are the ones who run the homes.

The second reason is that the women of Nigeria themselves make up 50% of the population. How do you hope to make progress if you are not meeting the needs of 50% of your population? The national average for maternal mortality is 545 out of every 100,000, but you know that it is just an average. In the northern part of Nigeria, over 1500 women die out of every 100,000. Look at the conflict and how people are being displaced. Families have been decimated and women are everything rolled into one and you must address their needs. Women are drivers of growth, whether in the family or in the community.