IWD: Ending Female Genital Mutilation Takes Centre Stage As Group Celebrates Day
Princess-Ekwi Ajide
Ending Female Genital Mutilation was tops on the agenda of discussions at the International Women’s Day celebration organised by Female Journalist Network Nigeria in collaboration with the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists, NAWOJ FCT Chapter.
To further buttress their commitment to promoting issues affecting women’s rights in society a pamphlet on Female Genital Mutilation was launched to teach rural women about the dangers of FGM.
The celebration tagged Together Ensure Inclusivity: Loud Her Voice, also sought ways of obtaining the 35 percent affirmative action for women’s participation in politics and other economic endeavours in Africa and Nigeria in particular.
Speaker after speaker at the event, agreed that gatherings such as this, have discussed and made recommendations for women inclusion but implementation has remained the bane of such programmes hence they took steps towards ensuring implementation in this instance.
According to the Senior Special Adviser to the President on School Feeding Programme, Yetunde Adeniji, a former Director General, of Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Dr Peterside Dakuku, who was Chairman on the Occasion, while lamenting the increasing number of setbacks women face, noted girlchild education is the panacea to promoting and protecting their rights in the society.
For the Chairperson, Senate Committee on Women Affairs, Senator Ireti Kingibe, represented by her Senior Special Adviser on Media and Press Secretary, Nana Kazaure, and the founder, Female Journalist Network Nigeria, Joy Asonye, making gender-related issues take the front burner of every national discuss, will assist end women’s rights continually abused, and pledged that they will use their offices to champion the elimination of female genital mutilation in the society.
Other speakers including the Chairman, of the Nigerian Union of Journalists FCT Council, Patrick Osarenti, the Chairperson of NAWOJ FCT, and co-organizer of the programme, Bassey Ikpang, and the Chairperson, House of Representatives Press Corps, Grace Ike, harped on the need to lobby the National Assembly to ensure bills that would rewrite the inclusivity history are promulgated, saying that training and retraining of female journalists may be the needed magic wand to challenge injustice meted against women.