Women Need Empowerment To Act As True Catalysts For Development—Mrs. Obiano

The wife of the Governor of Anambra State, Chief (Mrs.) Ebelechukwu Obiano has said that women need empowerment in the form of education and life sustaining skills to enable them act as true catalysts for the future.

Mrs. Obiano stated this in her contribution during a Round Table panel discussion on the theme: The Women Entrepreneurship as the Torch of the future “are Women the Catalyst for Emerging Future?” at the Women Entrepreneurship Forum Dubai 2015 which ended over the weekend.

Mrs. Obiano observed that women are catalysts because by their nature add spice to life and ensure effective functioning of the society. In other words, societies may not function effectively without the inputs of women because it would lack the quality inputs of the woman whether as advice in the family or role in the larger society.

However, a woman according to Mrs. Obiano, “must be adequately equipped with certain qualities to be able to play her role effectively. A woman needs education and also life sustaining skills to earn a living and be able to add value to others. Any woman with these qualities is then prepared to face life and is able to add value, advise the husband and contribute her quota to improve the society.”

Mrs. Obiano who is the founder and promoter of Caring Family Enhancement Initiative (CAFÉ), an NGO with a mandate for women empowerment, care for less privileged, uplift indigent widows, orphans, vulnerable children and persons with disabilities amongst others; recounted personal experience to buttress her points on the imperative of women empowerment. She highlighted her involvement in active charity works since 1991 and the expansion of her scope activities with the founding of CAFE in August 2014.

Some of the women empowerment programmes undertaken by Mrs. include; skills acquisition training in tailoring, hair dressing and beauty therapy, confectionaries and cake making and agricultural skills etc. She also enunciated plans to partner with other groups to train more women on modern skills that would enable them adapt to modern times so as to continue adding values; stressing that ”a well-trained woman is a role model to be emulated by any growing girl-child.”

Earlier, wife of the Vice President, Mrs. Oludolapo Osinbajo, who represented wife of the President at the Round Table, said that women are created as catalysts and that is why they are able to multi-task by doing many things at the same time, and yet are able to create wealth. She advised Nigerian women to try and equip themselves for challenges by improving themselves to be self-reliant. She noted that the seventeen Goals outlined are about every single Nigerian woman, without tribe or religion and that if pursued to conclusion would definitely improve the fortunes of our Nation.

In her Vote of thanks on behalf of the organizers of the event, Forum Chairperson, Hajia Salamatu Umar-Eluma, thanked the wife of the President and Vice President and the wives of the governors of the various states in attendance for taking advantage of the forum to equip themselves for the programmes they are implementing in their NGOs and future. As she put it, “you are all champions of women empowerment. I plead that you go back and begin to enhance the quality of life of the rural women.”