By ABAH ADAH, Abuja
Nigerian women have been called upon to leverage the opportunities that abound along the mining value chain to their economic empowerment and emancipation.
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Minister of State for Mines and Steel Development, Senator Gbemisola Saraki, made the call in Abuja while delivering the keynote address on Wednesday being day one of a 2-day Women in Mining High-Level National Summit in Abuja, hosted by Women in Mining Nigeria (WIMIN) in collaboration with Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
The Minister whose speech was presented by the Director, Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in the ministry, Mr Patrick Ojeka, noted that in line with global practices, the federal government had come up with initiatives, policies, and programmes aimed at mainstreaming gender and creating enabling environment for men and women alike to benefit from the rich potentials of the sector.
“We should not forget that the government since 2018 has mainstreamed gender its activities by making sure that its laws, policies, and programmes are not devoid of gender responsiveness.
“Gender mainstreaming has been embraced internationally as a strategy towards realizing gender equality. Our goal therefore is to ensure that both men and women have equal opportunities or benefit from the sector.
“Nevertheless, government alone cannot do it; that is why the effort of Women in Mining in Nigeria must be applauded,” the Minister said.
She noted also that apart from some of the periphery jobs women do to earn a living in the mining sector today, only very few own a site of their own because it is capital intensive and many women in Nigeria do not have personal resources or they lack access to bank loans as they do not have collateral for such.
She therefore urged women to always strive with personal efforts to invest in exploration of minerals also in order to have reliable data, adding that it is only then that banks would be willing to give them support them by way of loan.
In her welcome remark earlier, the national President of WIMIN, Engr Janet Adeyemi, explained that the High-Level Policy Dialogue was the summit of a year long programme tagged, “Mainstreaming Gender and Gender Justice in the Solid Minerals Sector of Nigeria”, adding that it designed and implemented by Women In Mining In Nigeria, and funded by OSIWA and Ford Foundation, and five states were captured as the implementation base of the programme whose WIMIN Chapters were all represented at the event.
She listed the states as: Taraba in the North-West, Plateau in the North-Central, Osun in the South-West, Ebonyi in the South-East, and Edo in the South-South.
According to her, during each phase of the project in the states, the management of WIMIN paid advocacy visits to the key state actors in each state where it was implemented for engagement on the inclusiveness of gender in the policies and programmes of the state, and all the states pledged their commitments.
Outlining the various achievements recorded by WIMIN so far, the women in mining chief advocate expressed delight that with the creation of more awareness, many women are getting interested in mining to the extent that the body now has a membership strength of over 3,000 and still counting.
“Today, WIMIN has over 3,000 members in Nigeria and the figures are growing speedily. We have established our states chapters across 5 geo-political zones in Nigeria.
“WIMIN has been mainstreamed into the Ministry of Mines and Steel Development as a recognised gender-rights organisation in the mining sector,” she said.
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