What Are the Necessary Areas to Improve the Movement for Women Empowerment in Nigeria?

Education. Workplace parity. Political influence.

Further improvement is vital in each of these areas in order to propel forward the Nigerian women’s empowerment movement.

Women have made big strides in the 21^st century, with more earning college degrees and using them to develop professional careers. Nigeria’s once entrenched culture of male dominance has eased, albeit gradually, and women have gained clout on university campuses, in corporate offices, in the halls of government.

Nigerian Senator Nenadi Usman, among the women minority in the National Assembly, lends prominence to that cultural advance. A senator since 2011, Nenadi Usman built upon her college education and post-graduate diploma to rise through the ranks of public service and attain a powerful voice for women and equality. She began as a classroom teacher, went on to work for the governor of Kaduna and later became the Nigerian Minister of State for Finance.

As a leader in the People’s Democratic Party, she serves as a role model and fights for legislation to bolster investments in education, advances for women in the workforce and overall economic prosperity.

But she would be the first to insist that we must further the momentum for years to come if Nigerian women are to realize full parity and, more broadly, if our country is to realize its full social and economic potential. Collectively, women remain a minority voice in education, business and politics.

Women account for roughly half of Nigeria’s population, and Nigeria is the most heavily populated country in Africa. If we, as a leading light on the continent, do not fully capitalize on the talent, intellect and viewpoints of half of our people, then we leave too much of our promise dormant.

Along a path of dormancy lies tragedy. Majorities of Nigerian girls live in poverty and lack opportunity to basic education. Many of them take on menial jobs before their teenage years simply to earn money to eat. Others enter into marriage long before adulthood. Many others want to learn but their local school systems lack the basic infrastructure necessary to provide consistent education opportunities.

Girls need their childhoods. They need their formative years to learn, to accumulate fundamental understandings of math, science and language. They need that foundation to even consider moving on to college and, ideally, to professional pursuits. We as a country must do more to help.

When a politician steps up with legislation to boost funding for schools or to champion the merits of women in the workforce – more ideas, more talent, more perspectives – more of us must all stand. We must stand tall alongside these leaders and vote for those who consistently trumpet the potential of women and who do so with the betterment of our economy and our country in mind.

A proven voice such as Usman, who has pushed for funding of education and school facilities, deserves backing. A leader such as Usman, who helped form a non-government organization called Education and Empowerment for Women and who chairs the Coalition of NGOs for Women Development in Kaduna State, should see her causes amplified by more Nigerians.

For the goals are aimed at benefiting us all: fairness, opportunity and economic prosperity.