By Onyewuchi Ojinnaka (Senior Correspondent)
The women agitation for the passage of Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill (GEO) will never cease until the bill is passed into law by the National Assembly. This was the position of women in the Federal Capital Territory during a rally organized by ActionAid Nigeria for women from Abuja rural communities of Dakwa, Jiwa, Pacepa, Tunganasara, Kuchiguyi and Kayache.
ActionAid, an International Non-Governmental Organisation working to further human rights and defeat poverty for all; organized the rally tagged ‘Women Rising on the State of the Nation’ at the Unity Fountain in the Federal Capital Territory. At the rally, the women maintained that gender equality should not be only a women issue but issue for humanity.
They urged the law making arms of government to pass the bill, positing that the bill if passed into law will respect the rights of the women. “The bill when passed into law will uphold women and girls’ sexual reproductive right and ensures protection against sexual harassment in education, employment and political domains” they argued.
Speaking on behalf of the women, Kande Yakubu, Hajara Abubakar and Adamu Amamatu from Jiwa, Dakwa and Tunganasara respectively called on government to provide basic amenities and social structures like schools, pipe-borne water, electricity and most importantly, empower the women to support their families. The women therefore called on government at all levels to come to their aids and make lives more meaningful for their communities which they said lack basic amenities.
“Our children trek several kilometres going to schools and it is not encouraging. We have lost some of them to hit and run drivers. We do not have drinkable water in our communities and there is no power supply. We want Federal Government, the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) and the Area Councils to come to our aid,” they pleaded.
Also speaking, ActionAid’s women’s right programme manager, Nkechi Ilochi-Omekedo, said the role of ActionAid is to facilitate process that will attract government to provide basic facilities to the rural people while at the same time complementing government’s efforts by catering for the people.
“What we do basically at our organization is to put into place what is called pilot project to showcase that with little or specific amount of money, you will be able to provide specific services for people. What we do is let people know about what is going on. We have worked in over 200 communities and we select them based on the hard-to reach-communities and we worked with them to provide health care centres, schools, water and basic and essential needs,” Ilochi-Omekedo stated.
