Ekiti State First Lady, Bisi Fayemi, has urged the national body of the International Inner Wheel club in Nigeria to do more in the area of protecting the rights of women and the girl child in the country.
Mrs. Fayemi, who noted that the organisation has been trying its best on gender issues, pointed out that the situation of women in terms of empowerment and enjoying other rights as men in the country is still discouraging. She, therefore, urged the Inner Wheel and other stakeholders to do more on gender issues.
She made these remarks on Friday while being presented an award in recognition of her role in advancing the rights of women and girls all over the world, by the Inner Wheel Nigeria led by the National Secretary Mrs. Olawumi Oladimeji in her office in Ado Ekiti, the state capital.
Fayemi said: “Great Inner Wheel members, we need to Level Up, we need to move to the next level. You have been doing the same thing for the past thirty-something years. You have increased the levels at which you are working, the intensity and your reach. That you have done, but the issues still remain the same.
“Poverty, discrimination, exclusion, lack of voice for women, and a lot of the interventions you are making are addressing the symptoms of those issues, not the root causes. That is why 30 years from now all women’s organizations we are still going to be working on the same issues.
“The charge I am giving Inner Wheel Nigeria as an organization is that you should now focus on the structures and processes that make it possible for women to continue to experience discrimination. For us to continue to be working on the same issues 30 years after the fact.”
Speaking further, Fayemi said the Club should also help in pressurising the government to enact laws to protect women from violence.
She explained that apart from Ekiti there is no other state in the southwest that has domesticated the National Gender Policy.
