New Telegraph

Osinbajo: How we tackle challenges by empowering of women, children

At an event to mark six years of the Future Assured Programme (FAP), an initiative of the Aisha Buhari Foundation, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo said that the future of Nigeria and her communities depend on how well addressed the many concerns of women and children. MURITALA AYINLA reports

Going by the statistics of the United Nations Children’s Fund, a United Nations agency responsible for pro-viding humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide, Nigeria is a `country of the young’ with almost half the entire 180 million strong population, 46 per cent, cur-rently under the age of 15. The current total for children under the age of five stands at nearly 31 million while each year, at least, seven million babies are born. While a little over one in three of Nigeria’s whole popu-lation lives below the poverty line, among children this proportion surges to 75 per cent.

 

It is believed that Nigeria’s 40 million wom-en of childbearing age (between 15 and 49 years of age) suffer a disproportionally high level of health issues surrounding birth. Al-though there is a low rate of birth registration across the country, especially in rural areas, in some areas up to 62 per cent, known data about child health issues is likely to underes-timate the true scale.

 

In spite of these challenges, the country is faced with other myriad of challenges ranging from insecurity, corruption, economic hard-ship and unemployment. The challenge was compounded by the global economic effects of COVID-19 which claimed millions of lives across the globe and left women and children more vulnerable.

But at an event to mark six years of the Fu-ture Assured Programme,(FAP) an initiative of the Aisha Buhari Foundation, Vice-Presi-dent Yemi Osinbajo, SAN, explained that vari-ous intervention programmes of the President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration since 2015 to date have been designed and imple-mented in order to improve the health, edu-cation and socio-economic conditions of the Nigerian people, especially women, children and youths.

Speaking at the colourful event which had in attendance, aside the First Lady, Hajiya Ai-sha Buhari and the wife of the Vice President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo; Osinbajo said that, “we agree with Future Assured’s belief that all so-cial indices can be influenced if the health, education and economic status of the popula-tion are improved upon. And that is the case, clearly, women constitute half our population and the youth are at least 60 per cent of that population. Women especially, young girls, continue to face problems of every kind and  this problem mutate as the social pressures increase every passing day.”

He added that, “since the COVID-19 pan-demic and the lockdowns, it has been shown by empirical studies that the rates of dropouts, especially of girls, have increased, child mar-riages also increased, adolescent childbearing, and gender-based violence, all these indices increased.

At the event, which was also graced by Gov-ernor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State; Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire; his counterpart in the Niger Delta Affairs Ministry, Senator Godswill Akpabio, and top United Nations officials, among others, the VP said that the Buhari-led Federal Government, has prioritised the solu-tions to these issues, adding that since 2015, the government has ensured that its social and entrepreneurial programmes have an affirma-tive component for women.

 

Giving the statistics of how women ben-efited in the programmes initiated so far, he said: “So, of the 2.4 million beneficiaries of the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme, 1.2 million were women – that is 56.4 per cent of beneficiaries. A total of N38bil-lion in loans have been disbursed over the last 4 years. Of the 1.1 million beneficiaries of the Conditional Cash Transfers, over 98 per cent of beneficiaries are women,” the VP disclosed.

“For our youth employment programme, N-Power, of the 526,000 employed, 40.4 per cent are female. Of the 106,074 cooks in our Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, 97 per cent are females.

“We implemented a payroll support pro-gramme which was designed to mitigate income losses in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and of the 307,173 employees that have benefited, 130,880 or 43 per cent of ben-eficiaries are female-owned businesses.

“Of 94,318 artisan beneficiaries of the pro-gramme, 40,386 are female artisans, i.e., over 41 per cent of beneficiaries. And so far, 35 per cent of all MSMEs grants are female. And all of these are deliberate affirmative action to ensure that women benefit proportionately.”

 

The Vice President further stated that “in 2020, the Federal Executive Council approved a World Bank credit facility in the sum of $500million to finance the Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment    Project, to improve secondary education op-portunities among girls in targeted areas of participating States which are Borno, Ekiti, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi and Plateau.”

 

In addressing violence and other abuses against women, the VP said, “in November 2019, in an effort to enhance access to justice, we secured a toll-free emergency number and shortcode for the FCT- SGBV Response Team, with the generous support of Airtel.

 

“We also developed Referral Guidelines for Gender-Based Violence Response in Nigeria and a National Guide for the Establishment of Sexual Assault Referral Centres in Nigeria, to further enhance coordination.”

 

“Also in 2019, the President directed the Na-tional Human Rights Commission to set up a special panel to investigate cases of unlawful arrests, assault and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the Federal Capital Territory fol-lowing complaints of raids of night clubs and arrests of women by the Police,” the Vice Presi-dent added.

 

Commending the Future Assured pro-gramme for the impact of its interventions across health, education and social welfare, Prof. Osinbajo said “it certainly has been an exciting 6 years”.

 

He listed some of the impactful projects ex-ecuted by the initiative as “the educational initiatives, especially the Youth Education Em-powerment Programme (YEEP) where large numbers of youths are given tutorial classes, in preparation for WAEC, NECO, NABTEB and JAMB; support to IDPs that return to their communities with relief materials including foodstuff, clothing, beddings, and building materials.

 

Other projects listed by the VP include “Building of Schools and Orphanages in Mai-duguri; Distribution of Future Assured Packs to Patients in Abuja Hospitals, Free Health Screening Services in Kogi State in conjunction with Kogi Women and Youth Advancement Foundation; Women Empowerment and Training in Lagos State alongside Distribu-tion of Maternity Kits also in Lagos, among others.”

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