President Goodluck Jonathan was speaking at the inaugural launch of the G-win project, a federal government initiative to empower women and girls in Nigeria.
He stressed that women are important to the country’s growth.
“Women and men must together move our society forward and any society that tries to sideline women or don’t maximize the values we have in our women, of course, you were reducing their chances of growth,” he said.
The event, which took place in Abuja, gave opportunities to the Ministers of Communication Technology as well as Agriculture, to present to Nigerians what they had done so far with the funds made available for the projects.
The Minister of State for Agriculture, Ms. Asaba Ahmed, said that the approach they took was to select members from women cooperative groups nationwide.
“We selected value chains with import substitution values and then we focused on processing, on training and beyond training we provided starter packs,” she said.
The Minister of Communication Technology, also explained that the role of her ministry in the G-win programme is to ensure that it reverses gender-specific gap and also close the digital gender divide.
The project, which also covers the Ministry of Works and Water Resources, also has international recognitions from the African Development Bank and the World Bank.
According to the Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a unique budgetary approach has been adopted by the Federal Government to execute the G-Win project.
She noted, “When girls and women are economically empowered, infant mortality declines, agricultural productivity rises, population growth is moderated, cycles of poverty are broken and economies expand and grow.”
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