By CECILIA KAFRAN

As Production Editor of the New Nigerian Weekly newspaper in the 90s, most of my duties were desk-bound at the head office in Kaduna. Occasionally, I covered assignments that were women, children, and family-related, including rights and health. I recall that some names that always cropped up in the news cycle was that of Comrade Uba Sani, as he then was called.

As a Kaduna-based  human rights and pro-democracy activist, his name was a household name in the media and the development circles. I have never met him in person though, but was impressed with the focus of the Uba Sani Foundation he established in 2018, which included impacting the most vulnerable groups (including women/girls and youth) through education, skills-building, and more.

I lost track of socio-political issues in my beloved Kaduna after leaving the media in 2010 and relocating to Abuja where I engaged in development work.  Sometime in 2023, I read about Comrade Uba Sani in a newspaper write-up as one of the candidates vying for the governorship of Kaduna State; I had the confidence that he would be successful in the electioneering process given his track records in other elective positions including the legislature. As I expected, on May 29, 2023, I saw him being sworn in as the new governor of Kaduna state. That was the last time I heard of him until last week.

On Friday, November 22, 2024, Governor Uba Sani launched the Kaduna State Women Economic Empowerment Policy, the Women Peace and Security Action Plan, as well as the Youth Peace and Security Action Plan at the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Conference Centre. As a woman, mother, and development worker, I was interested in the subject matter, so, I followed the event on TV.  I learnt that Governor Uba Sani has done a lot for gender equality and inclusivity within a short time – a little over one year of taking the reign of Kaduna leadership.

In his speech, he reeled out what his administration has been doing to empower women in the state and the rationale for doing so. According to him, investing in women is not just investing in the economy but the future of Kaduna State. The governor further stated that he wants to “create a Kaduna State where every girl knows she has the right and the means to dream and achieve that dream, and a place where every woman knows that she is valued, supported, and celebrated.” This vision is heart-warming and brings hope to the womenfolk that this administration has placed their interest on  the front-burner of its decisions.

Presently, 65,848 women out of the total 70,051 have benefited from Kaduna State’s Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme, Governor Uba Sani disclosed at the summit. He added that his administration has ramped up the implementation of Kaduna State Women Economic Empowerment Funds (KADSWEF), an annual support initiative that provides access to financial resources for women. “We provided the sum of N200 million in the 2024 Budget for this Fund; so far, 10,786 women have benefited from this initiative. Government is set to flag off the 4.0 tranche distribution to more beneficiaries with women drawn from cooperative groups and associations,” he added.

Likewise, his government’s poverty alleviation programme, ‘A Kori Talauci’, which means ‘drive away poverty’ in Hausa language, has empowered 4,912 underserved women across the state. This is indeed a milestone!

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Apart from the disbursement of these funds, the government has trained over 5,000 rural/ semi urban women on large scale rice shelling using modern agricultural techniques in order to increase productivity, ensure high input processing, maximize profit, reduce labour cost, and improve quality of products to better the lives of households. Also, over 120 women and adolescent girls have been  equipped with various vocational and entrepreneurship skills, the governor told the audience – talk of teaching women how to fish instead of giving it to them!

Besides these, the forward-looking governor is thinking about providing technology skills for the women; he is bridging the digital divide as the Kaduna State Government has collaborated with Data Science Nigeria (DSN) and google.org in the Arewa Ladies4Tech program. The aim is to empower 5,000 women with skills in ICT, data science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and entrepreneurial applications of digital technologies across the state.

In my opinion, Governor Uba Sani is the He-For-She Ambassador of Northern Nigeria. By way of an explanation, He-For-She is the United Nations global solidarity movement for Gender Equality, where men stand in solidarity with women for gender equality. Governor Uba Sani has made a smart move by bringing this initiative to Nigeria and Kaduna State ahead of his peers.

The impact of these efforts by the governor will not only be felt by the girls and women alone, but they will impact the family, community and Northern Nigeria as a whole. As they say when you ‘train’ a woman you train a nation!

It is therefore critical for me to call on the women of Kaduna state to utilize these rare opportunities provided them by this game-changer of our time, make very good use of the available funds, trainings, and initiatives to better their economic situations and achieve the much-desired empowerment and close the equality gap.

*Cecilia writes from Abuja

The Star