A senior lecturer at Bayero University, Kano (BUK), Dr. Abul-aziz Sani Zango, has said that women illiteracy is currently in the lead worldwide as, according to him, they are the most deprived in the world.
Delivering a lecture entitled “Equality for Women, Progress for All” as part of activities marking the International Women Day celebration in Kano, Zango said out of the world’s 744 million illiterates, 54 per cent of them are women and that they earn $1 per day compared to what men earn.
According to him, women are being made to suffer the biting fangs of deprivation, poverty and squalour in addition to being sidelined in politics, education and economy with the men folk showing lukewarm attitude to their plight.
He said” “Women are gradually progressing despite the fact that they are the most under developed lot in the world. They are only being taken for a ride forgetting that they are the one deciding the fate of the nation’s political class.”
The university don maintained that 65 per cent of Nigerian voters are women and that they have 7.3 per cent of the key political posts as against 92.3 per cent of the posts allocated to men.
He called for the reversal of the trend by putting a stop to the spectre of marginalisation against women, warning that “allowing such a trend to persist portends a bad omen to the quest for equality and social justice by women.”
