Soludo also stated that empowering women goes beyond social safety and interim interventions, adding that education is key to driving women’s development across the divide.
She stated these in Awka on Friday while talking to a gathering of women during her speech to mark the 2024 International Women’s Day celebration.
The first lady spoke on this year’s theme, tagged “Invest in women: Accelerate progress,” while explaining how better society can get if women are rightly empowered.
She said, “Empowering women goes beyond social safety and interim interventions. Education is key here. Of course, we cannot underestimate the important role that education plays in societal development.
“We can achieve this by restructuring our economic visions and opening up special provisions for women in each economic and human capital opportunity. Providing quality, accessible and affordable educational opportunities for the female gender is a great game-changer in human capital investment moves.
“We must also look at getting rid of certain socio-cultural, religious, and economic obstacles that are facing most women – especially those residing in rural communities.
“The International Women’s Day is beyond a ceremony of fanfares. It is an important fixture that gives us the opportunity to idolise the pride of being a woman. To be a woman is to be unique. In our uniqueness lies immeasurable strength, resilience, and great dreams. Today, just like every other day, women deserve to be celebrated.”
According to her, this year’s edition of the global date is quite special for women, just as she urged the women to take immense pride in their exceptional identity.
“But being a woman comes with a certain kind of responsibility. You may call them challenges. However, God has also created every woman to be extra strong, stoic, and determined. Take perfect motivation from women who have beaten social, cultural, ethno-religious, and economic impediments to rise in their chosen careers and vocations. Or women who have broken high glass ceilings to make historical marks on national and global record books.
“You, too, can. Being a woman gives you that extra motivation to think big, dream big, and achieve big. Of course, we can not achieve a world where progress trends if women are still subjected to societal pressure, molestation, battery, abuses, stigma, and short-changing rules.
“The towering statistics of women who are going through different forms of abuses at homes, workplaces, and even in supposed places of worship are scary. In the midst of the menace, we are still dealing with cultural issues like Female Genital Mutilation and subjecting widows to indignifying conditions.
“Women have also been caught in the dangers of human trafficking. These horrible revelations stand like a giant devil in the face of our society’s willingness to make that ”
‘accelerated progress’. Empowering women through education, economic and job opportunities, will reduce poverty and give them an edge over most of these problems,” she stressed.
She, however, urged the women to mobilise political will and resources to address these existential issues faced by women in their immediate and remote communities.
She further pointed out that Anambra State clearly understands the indispensable role of women in the New Anambra Project, adding that, “we cannot achieve the dream of a livable and prosperous homeland without the vision, brilliance, and tenacity of our great women”.
“Just last year, we activated a partnership with the World Health Organization and Clinton Health Access Initiative to provide free cervical cancer screening and treatment for five thousand Anambra women. At the end of the exercise, over ten thousand women were successfully screened, while those whose results came back positive were treated free of any cost.
“Today, our free antenatal care and delivery services have shifted attention largely to professional medical care, thereby saving the lives of thousands of women who would have subscribed to dangerous local child-bearing practices because of the costs of childbirth in government facilities,” she added.
