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KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY DR KAYODE FAYEMI, GOVERNOR OF EKITI STATE AT
THE ELEVENTH (COMMITTEE OF WIVES OF LAGOS STATE OFFICIALS) COWLSO
CONFERENCE, SEVENTH NOVEMBER TWO THOUSAND AND ELEVEN, LAGOS
‘WOMEN – HOW RELEVANT ARE WE?
I am very delighted to be here this morning, speaking at the closing ceremony of this
year’s COWLSO conference, with the theme ‘Women – How relevant are we?’. I have
followed the activities of COWLSO over the years, and I must admit to being a big fan
and admirer of the work of COWLSO. I would like to acknowledge all the great women
who have played a role in developing this very important organisation and building it
up to be the very significant institution it has become in Lagos State. I congratulate
Dame Abimbola Fashola, the Wife of the Governor of Lagos State and her colleagues
for keeping the COWLSO dream alive. You have demonstrated, through your
commitment and hard work, that women can indeed work together and achieve great
things. Your accomplishments at COWLSO have inspired women in other places, so
you should not be surprised to hear that in my state, we now have a Forum of
Spouses of Ekiti State Officials (FOSESO) which was launched in June 2011. I would
also like to thank my brother, His Excellency, Babatunde Raji Fashola, for the
steadfast support he has been giving to COWSLO, and for all that he has done to
promote the well-being of women in Lagos State.
In spite of our immense wealth as a nation, Nigeria continues to suffer the
consequences of poor leadership, misguided economic policies, massive debt, and
unbridled corruption. This has manifested itself in the loss of livelihoods,
unemployment, and a sharp rise in the number of citizens living in dire poverty. If
there is a crisis in any community, women are affected in different ways from men,
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and in most cases, they suffer more. This affects all spheres of
development – economic, political, technological or social. Therefore women in Nigeria
have borne the brunt of the country’s misfortunes. Women continue to lack access to
resources such as land, capital, technology, water and adequate healthcare. Majority
of women - most of whom are rural based, and most urban women - continue to live in
conditions of economic underdevelopment and social marginalisation. Maternal and
infant mortality rates in Nigeria remain unacceptably high – one of the highest in the
world.
With the continued impoverishment of the country, and the inability to prioritise
human security needs, most of our cities and towns have become violent playgrounds
for unemployed youth, local militia, gangs of armed robbers, and kidnappers. Millions
of women and girls in Nigeria have been rendered voiceless due to the complex
manipulation of culture, religion and tradition. This has also made more women and
girls vulnerable to sexual exploitation and at risk of contracting HIV & AIDS. Crimes
against women, young girls and children are on the rise. Gender-based violence,
femicides, rapes, sexual assaults, harmful traditional and religious practices, and
institutionalized gender-based discrimination, make private and public spaces in our
country very unsafe for women and girls.
It is against this backdrop that we need to turn to strategies that can set us back on
the right path, because the way things are going now for us as a country, we might as
well be on an expressway to nowhere. We need to apply the brakes to the dangerous
vehicle that is taking us to a destination that none of us desires, and call for new
roadmaps, new vehicles and new drivers.
Women hold the key to fixing most of what is wrong with our country. Now, more than
ever, we need a reframing of our democratic spaces and cultures. We need to bridge
the huge gap between the powerful visions needed to drive the country forward and
the grim realities of unfulfilled expectations and dashed dreams that shape the day-to-
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day lives of millions of Nigerians. Part of this demand for new visions
and new directions is a call for solutions to our leadership crisis. This requires new
faces, voices, experiences and insights, and it is Nigerian women, in their capacities as
mothers and wives, who can help drive this forward. It has therefore become
imperative, that we look to women such as yourselves, our wives and mothers, to help
us figure a way out of these huge challenges our nation faces today.
This is where I turn to the question that COWLSO is asking in their theme for this
year’s conference – ‘Women-How relevant are we?’ The truth of the matter is, if we
decide to answer the question in the negative and say, for example, ‘Women are not
relevant’, then we have earned ourselves a first class ticket to an unspeakable
destination as a country.
As women who are married to men in positions of authority and prominence in this
country, you are very familiar with the expectations that people have of those in
leadership positions. It is assumed that if you are in a position of leadership, you have
a responsibility to address all the needs of people in your various constituencies,
regardless of how unrealistic some of those expectations might be. We your husbands,
are therefore aware that you are usually left to deal with those things which we are
unable to attend to – the people we don’t have the time to meet, those who need one
favour or the other, the family members who need our attention, the social functions
that you attend on our behalf, the endless requests for various forms of financial
assistance – the list of the things you do on our behalf is endless. You also put up with
our round the clock work schedules, and encourage us to continue to do whatever we
can in the interests of our call to public service. A regular feature of public life is being
open to scrutiny most of the time, so in many instances, you our wives often find
yourselves under attack on the basis of our alleged actions or inactions. You are also
forced to listen to a lot of unsolicited and mostly unhelpful advice which is intended
for your husbands but since we are usually unavailable to hear it ourselves, you are
drafted in as the reluctant messengers.
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All these things that you do and endure, are over and above the
multiple roles you already have – many of you are solid professionals in your own
right, you are mothers, and you are contributing to the community at large through
your political, entrepreneurial, philanthropic, community and religious activities. Most
of what you do is undervalued, unrewarded and often taken for granted. If we had to
quantify what we ought to pay you for your free services to us, your husbands, as our
cooks, nannies, cleaners, event planners, secretaries, counsellors, stylists, nurses,
accountants, spiritual guides, we would never be able to pay what we owe. So back to
your question, ‘Women- How relevant are we’? – the answer I would give to that is
without you, we men would not be relevant.
I suppose the question you might want to ask instead is, ‘How do we remain relevant?’
I have always maintained that we cannot achieve any of our development goals as a
nation if we act as if women are not relevant. We cannot solve the myriad problems we
have as a nation without addressing the empowerment needs of up to 50% of the
population. As political leaders, it is incumbent upon us to prioritise the following
issues when it comes to addressing women’s empowerment and gender equality:
 Political will and commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment
 Women’s economic empowerment and livelihoods
 Commitment to women’s participation in public life
 Women’s health, security and safety.
Nigeria is a signatory to many international and regional agreements that are meant to
guarantee women’s rights, but there has been minimal political will to ensure that
these guarantees mean something in the lives of ordinary women. We therefore need to
put effective mechanisms in place for the formulation and implementation of policy
frameworks, particularly those that relate to poverty, anti-discrimination, health,
human security, and the promotion and protection of women’s rights. It is only when
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we have these things in place that we can truly say that women are
equal shareholders in the democratic enterprise.
I am pleased to inform you that Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment is part
of my eight point agenda in Ekiti State. As part of our commitment to these issues, in
June 2011, we domesticated the National Gender Policy in Ekiti State. In addition, on
November 3rd, our legislature passed the Gender Based Violence Bill into law, which
can be described as ground-breaking and comprehensive legislation meant to protect
women and girls in the state from all forms of violence. Underlying all these policy and
legislative frameworks is serious political will, zero tolerance for all forms of
discrimination against women, and a commitment to providing equal opportunities for
men and women.
As your conference for this year comes to an end, I would like to leave you with the
following thoughts:
Remember you are valued
I believe that you can remain relevant by always remembering that even when we do
not acknowledge it or actually voice it, we your husbands are proud of you and what
you accomplish every day. You are deeply valued. You do things that most of us could
never dream of doing, simply because you have learnt how to do them well over the
years. It is only women who can wake up and make breakfast, drop children off at
school in clean uniforms, go to work, plan dinner while at work, stop at a function on
the way back home, get home and cook, oversee homework, settle quarrels amongst
the kids and house help, and still have time to listen to how our day went. Even for
those of you who are in a position to take on support for all these tasks, we
acknowledge what you put into oversight and coordination to keep the home front
running.
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Revisit what you teach your children
Most of us have grown up learning certain attitudes and behaviours about gender
roles and identities. Our mothers in particular would encourage girls to learn how to
cook in the kitchen while the boys would be encouraged to go out to play. If we want to
see a shift in attitudes and behaviours, then we need to teach our children to learn
how to work and play as equals. Girls should be brought up to be independent,
productive and creative, and boys need to learn how to value and respect girls. The
deeply patriarchal societies we live in tend to render women irrelevant. If you want to
be truly relevant, you and your husbands need to raise your children differently so
that everyone has the same opportunities.
Take your place as leaders
Women across the African continent have done an excellent job of pushing for
access of women to decision making. The case they have made is that the
implications of women being excluded from decision-making are serious. It
means if women do not have a voice where key decisions which affect their lives
are made, then their capacity for full development and equality is severely
limited. Women’s involvement in decision-making contributes to redefining
political priorities, placing new issues on the political agenda which reflect and
address women’s gender-specific concerns, values and experiences, and
provides new perspectives on mainstream political issues. Without the active
participation of women and the inclusion of their perspectives at all levels of
decision-making, the goals of good governance and inclusive, transparent
democratic processes cannot be achieved.
Women bring different leadership skills into the public space than men. Men have
learnt (and are not born) to be leaders by seizing opportunities, competing with their
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peers, making themselves heard and not just seen, and building
hierarchies and networks to get their agendas accomplished. Women have learnt,
through their socialisation (as mothers, wives, daughters) to listen, to negotiate, to
build bridges and consensus, to work in flexible ways, nurture friendships and
relationships and to manage time better. We all learn these skills, we are not born
with them. These skills that women have are undervalued as ‘soft skills’ in the harsh
worlds of politics and business, and are not considered as important as the ‘hard
skills’ that men have. The truth of the matter is that the skills and experiences that
women bring to the leadership table are as important as what men have to offer.
Indeed, we need to learn the value of soft power – understated but effective, not loud,
brash and/or brutish. We therefore need to encourage a critical mass of women in
leadership, especially in governance, so that hopefully, we will start seeing some real
changes in the ways in which our communities are led and managed.
Make good use of your political and social capital
As wives of public servants, individually you might have some clout, but as an
organisation, you can be truly formidable. You need to use the power of your numbers
and your political and social capital to take a stand on some of the problems we are
grappling with in our society today. You need to lend your voices to issues such as the
increased number of vulnerable and destitute women forced into commercial sex work,
violence against women and girls, trafficking, the exploitation of children and so many
others. I am aware that you are doing a significant amount of philanthropic work to
help ameliorate some of these social problems in the state, but I am also challenging
you to become visible and audible advocates for the less privileged. In addition to the
great work you are doing in Lagos State, I would also encourage you to establish
partnerships and collaborations with like-minded organisations in other States in the
country so that you can share best practices and learn from each other.
Women – How relevant are you? You are the salt of the earth, the mothers who give
birth to us and to our children, the hands that rock the cradle, the healers of our
wounds, the angels who build and guard our homes, the intercessors who pray for us
ceaselessly, the light of our lives. You are as relevant as life itself.
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God bless you all.
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