By Perpetua Onuegbu
Abuja: (NAN)/Flowerbudnews: The Nigerian Women Economic Development (NigWED), an NGO, says it will train 10,000 girl-students in 10 tertiary institutions in the country on financial intelligence, leadership skills and political participation.
Mr Lugard Okonobo, Director-General, NigWED, made this known on Friday during a Mentor-Mentee Session it organised in Abuja.
According to Okonobo, the programme will be used to mark the International Youth Day, with a special focus on young girls.
“NigWED is a collaborative initiative with the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs which will run for three years in two circles from 2024 to 2027, and 2027 to 2030.
“Within these three years of the two circles, we want to see that young girls are empowered with skills for financial independence, leadership and governance because every young girl today is a potential woman tomorrow.
“The theme for this year’s programme is ‘Click to Progress, Youths in the Digital Space for Sustainable Development’ and we adopted it from that of the United Nations.
“To empower the female children, we must engage with them to increase the space for them to have leadership skills, participate in politics and governance.
This is not achievable from our research without the availability of finance.
“For that reason, we have partnered with CHC Agritech Africa to explore the agric value chain of production, preservation, processing, packaging and promotion which are the five Ps of agriculture.
“This is to provide access to economic empowerment with the support of finance for our young girls to be empowered economically and financially,” Okonobo said.
He said that girls could be socially responsible within the space of leadership, politics and governance in Nigeria when they are financially empowered.
The NigWED boss said that financing was important since economic empowerment would be impossible to achieve without financial inclusion.
“Finance is the core driver; whether you want to participate in leadership or go into business, you need money for logistics.
“So we want to train the young girls and give them access to make money so that they don’t rely on handouts.
“We will teach them how to fish, so they can contribute to noble causes and lift other young girls in the future when they are financially empowered to support the system,” Okonobo said.
On how to achieve their plan he said “We are starting with students first.
“We have students and youths; so, for the first leg, we have partnered with the African Female Youth and Students Development Initiative (AFYSDI) to drive it.
“What they do is to go to the campuses of the tertiary institutions to catch them young, and our target is a minimum of 1000 female students per tertiary institution in a year.
“We have a cluster of 10 female students in each school that will have 100 students to mentor and manage.
“We are starting first with the 10 schools within a three hours drive from FCT; that is in states like, Kogi, Niger, Kaduna, Plateau, Benue and Nasarawa states.
“Within these states, we can get 10 schools which will give us 10,000 female students for a start and for this first circle of three years, we want to achieve up to 10,000 female students that will be under our platform.
“We shall be providing leadership capacity building strategies on how they can participate in politics and governance beginning from their 100 level as class representatives and even leaders of Student Union Governments,” he said. (NAN)(www.nannews.ng)
