FG specifically urged political parties to deliberately leave some offices exclusively open for only women to contest.
The Minister of State (Labour and Employment), Festus Keyamo (SAN), said this during the capacity strengthening training workshop on advocacy and communication for women cooperatives from the Nigerian for Women Projects, which just ended in Abuja, on Thursday.
The event was organised by Development Research and Projects Centre in collaboration with Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies in Ilorin and sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other partners.
Keyamo charged stakeholders to put in place measures to “strengthen and empower the 49.32 per cent of critical Nigeria’s population and entrust inclusive development of the country.”
The Coordinator of DRPC, Dr Yahaya Hashim, said the centre had trained over 500 civil society organisations since 1994, adding that working with women economic collectives was an opportunity to strengthen a critical sector of Nigeria’s population to be able to demand for improvement in their lives in Nigeria.
The Director-General of MINILS, Issa Aremu, while speaking during the event said, “Understandably, the marginalization of women in political power structure dominates the gender discourse in the current efforts to review the 1999 constitution.”
Keyamo also said that the Federal government was working with the National Assembly to ensure inclusion of women’s economic development and financial inclusion in the ongoing constitutional review in Nigeria.
