By Abdullahi Muhammad Abuja
May we meet you briefl y please? My name is Dr. Mrs. Gloria Laruba Shoda mni, National President “National Council for Women Society of Nigeria. (NCWS) Ma, how did you come about this offi ce? I contested for it. What informed you to contest for the National President of NCWS? Well. all my adult life I have been working with women, I have been with so many organizations, they are all women organizations, even when I buy into politics I had women organizations.
I have been in NAWOWA as a military man’s wife and grass root, better life, all women organizations I have been involved in. About six years ago, I became the Vice President of this organization and then of course last year I contested for presidency of this organization and I won. What intentions do you have for Nigerian women and women in general? We want to empower them in all ramifi cation, be it education, health, social cultural activities, everything. You know, we sensitize and interface on their behalf with the government on policies that are positive to women, children and the physically challenged.
So these are what we do, we support government when they have good policies and then we ofcourse disagree with the government when the policies are not positive enough. We try to advocate that more women should be in governance, there should be more women in government, there should be more women in Politics, there should be more women in the general aff airs of the Nations policy making.
Th e women should be well represented in the policy making of this country. The national body of this organization is seating in the heart of F.C.T, can you tell us the percentage of how many women that are being actually bullied by their men, or by the husbands? Let me educate you, we have structures in the 36 states including F.C.T, we have F.C.T branch the chapters which has a President, I am sure you saw the president some while ago; So they take charge of what is happening in the Federal Capital, and then we have president in other 36 states, including presidents in the 774 local government areas of Nigeria. So, it means we are spread all over Nigeria and we are well represented.
If you say we should give numbers or data of men that are battering their wives, we are not going to be able to do that. Because you know, a lot of women are being battered but they don’t report, they keep it secret; some will keep it secret until they are killed, they don’t come out to say it their men continue to beat them until one day they get killed. A lot of people when you see bruises on them you will know that this person has being beaten up, they will tell you they fell from somewhere, they hit their face on the wall and all that kind of things; so it’s very diffi cult to have a data on that. Except women start coming out which I advocate they should be doing, when men battered them those people that beat their wives should come out and let us know, when they let us know we will forward them to the right places and affi liates, FIDA is one of our affi liates and of course if we can get those type of reports we will channel it to FIDA. You did mentioned physically challenged, women, and children whom your organization NCWS has actually empowered, but I didn’t hear you mention beggars on the streets?
Yes! recently we fl ag off a program for the street urchins, we called on many Nigerians to come and contribute so that we could move them from the streets, pay their school fees, pay for their WAEC fees, we are still waiting for those people who even promised us monies to be able to assist these people. We are still expecting them to fulfi ll their promises. You know our attitudes Nigerians a lot of times when these type of calls goes out, they are not interested… even those people who have foundations they choose what they want to do with their monies, so we are hoping that one day we will be fi nancially strong enough to assist these people, However, in this July we are going to have the a programme “windows walk’’, we want to walk for peace, we want unity in Nigeria, we don’t want Nigeria to break because the unity of Nigeria is our strength.
We are not talking about restructuring we are talking about unity, we want peace and “we don’t want more widows, we have enough widows, we want natural widows not widows that are caused by war, if people get old and pass away yes it’s okay, but not when we ourselves invite terror into our midst. I was a young girl during the last war and I know what happened, at least I saw some things. I was old enough to be able to remember the gruesome things that happened during the Biafra War. So, I would not want that kind of thing to happen to us again, I think Nigeria needs unity and peace. What do you think NCWS can do to actually bring Nigeria to the knowledge that that beggars should be totally out of the street?
President: It is very diffi cult I have told you that we have initiated that program, that we want to begin to go from zone to zone to be able to remove beggars from the streets; we have fl agged it off in Abuja, many people came and promised to donate, some promised that in their own States, they will remove this number from the street and we should come and watch them do it, but we are still waiting for those promises to be fulfi lled, that was what I said. So it is something that is on our mind to do, it is something that we really mind to do; so it is an NCWS project. FCT as a State has a department of social development in their secretariat seating at Art & Culture, what is NCWS doing to partner with them in order to actually evacuate these beggars out of the streets?
Th ank you very much, we just met with the new DG (Director General), and we have talked and we expected to go back and see him so that we can partner with them and see what we can do and come up with modality of what we can do with the situation on ground. It was just yesterday that we met, so we hope that in the next couple of months something will start happening. You are now one year in offi ce, as the National president, what are your activities at line? Well you know what the economy is like, but we have spread our activities for the one year anniversary, one of them is the ‘widows walk’, we want to empower widows, and widows want to walk around and tell the government that they don’t want war, they want peace we have decided to use widows because when there is war and there is problem it is the women that becomes widows, it is the women that suff er it most, then the children also take part of the suff ering. So the widows themselves want to walk because we have so many of them amongst us. And we don’t want to become widows just like that all of a sudden; just because of some peoples selfi shness, so we want to walk and say we want peace in Nigeria, we want unity we don’t want division in Nigeria, that is one of the activities we are going to do. Other things we intend to do, include launching of our plate number, the NCWS plate number, you know we used to have it before but all of a sudden the thing went extinct, we are going to of course have a dinner with all the stakeholders, so that we can talk and plan the future of NCWS.
We are going to fl ag off programmes that we are going to have in the next couple of months; like the political summit, all women wants to come together through the offi ces of NCWS to discuss 2019 which way forward for women, what are we going to do then, are we going to stay and fold our hands and watch men take all the seats from us? Or are we going to join them and also fi ght for positions. Th ose are some of the things that we are going to talk about. Th ere is also going to be presentation of awards, we are going to give out criteria for our NCWS National award so that people will stand and start thinking about it from now. Why we are having a low-key program now is because next year NCWS is going to be sixty; so we want the other program to come when we are sixty so we want it low key now, especially because we want to pray for the quick recovery for our President that is part of our program on that time; when we are praying we should not be doing too much program.
Th e climax of our program is prayers, on Friday we will go to the Mosque and pray for the quick recovery of our president, and for Nigerians and his leaders and for all these crises that are coming up. On Sunday the Christians will go to Church, those are the activities that are lined up. You were a member of the Better Life organization, I don’t know if you will tell us the little you know about Better Life organization. Better Life organization is very great organizations that touch the lives of people in the rural areas especially. A lot of things were done by Better Life, part of them are still visible today; markets, shopping complexes, our Women Centre is one of Better Life’s legacy that we will never forget. Th e founder is of course the late Excellency Hajiya Maryam Babangida, a very great woman, a woman we should emulate, we will never forget her. She is somebody that I particularly admire when she was alive. When I was in the University, University of Benin, my project was on Better Life, so that was what I wrote as a project and I am going to expand it and turn it into a book very soon. Do you think the promotion of women initiative; do you think it’s a hub that you want to create to empower women in various states for them to be able to voice out? Ofcourse, that is what the vote will do, that is why I said we are going to have a political summit, during that political summit we are going to talk… it’s all women political summit, of course men will be there because we are gender sensitive to talk to us, we want to interface and talk and know why are women not taking part in politics. It’s something that we really want to do, we want women to come and talk and by 2019, women should be in governance, whether it’s by elective or appointment. What date actually are you going to be won in offi ce? On the 17th of July, 2017. NCWS is seating in the earth of Abuja, not only that, it is very close to the offi ce of State Governor, that is, the FCT Minister, what has being your relationship? Well, I don’t know what to say about our relationship with the FCT minister, we have gone there on a courtesy call we told him all of our problems; one of the problems that we took to him was that the National President does not have a house, but he wrote us a letter back that he is not in the position to provide a house for us. And we are going to pay; we are not saying he should give us a free house; it’s a house from FCT to assist women. And we have other things lying on his table he is supposed to treat. Since we visited him about how many Months ago, towards the beginning of the year we are yet to see results; we’ve been going there all the time and there is no interface between us and the Minister.
He does not call us for anything, we don’t know what is going on, and sometimes we see him walking with the market women that our affi liates and are under us. It looks as if the Minister does not understand the importance of NCWS. Ma, apart from the fact that you had no interface with the Minister, what progress have you noticed in the FCT that has to do with women?
I have not seen any empowerment program going for women in the FCT, because we have the FCT chapter of NCWS and even when we fl agged off the widows and the street urchins program, we invited the FCT minister but he didn’t come he didn’t honour our invitation. We have been inviting him for other programs of course and he has not been coming for those programs. So we don’t know what we have done that is wrong to the FCT minister. Are you saying that the minister does not recognized NCWS?
I wouldn’t say he does not recognise NCWS because we have visited him and he welcomed us, but that is where the thing stops, he knows that NCWS is existing, he welcomed us to his offi ce and he told us that he knows us and that we are his mothers and all that and that is where it stops.
If we understand your lament very well, the Minister is actually not cooperating with NCWS, does the wife partner with NCWS? Well, initially the wife supported us during our campaigns and she did very well, but in recent times we have not been seeing her, she does not interface with us at all. Dr. Mrs. Gloria Laruba Shoda Are you saying that the FCT Minister wife does not subscribe to the activities of NCWS? Well I will just say that this is an internal issue between herself and her husband, because I mean I wouldn’t know why she is not appearing in our programs even when we invite her, it is a domestic issue that only both of them can say, I don’t know I can’t say anything about that.
Away from that, do you think he has been doing his own best in terms of his primary assignment as the FCT minister?
I usually talk frankly, I don’t like beating about the bush and I tell the truth; there are too many dark areas in Abuja the lights are not working, that’s why people do not stop at traffi c lights at night, because there are robbers lurking around traffi c lights to attack motorists. Th ere was a day I was on the traffi c I was waiting, a man just came and said madam please move away from the traffi c you can be attacked, a man parked and told us that we should just move that don’t wait if there is no vehicle coming just go because you can be attacked anytime.
So why is Abuja not lite up?, there should be light along the streets so that we can be safe, that is one of the things that I have seen that is a very serious problem in Abuja. Th en the roads, you can imagine the road leading to the FCT offi ce; his own offi ce is yet to be tarred. I don’t know, he can use his good offi ce to ask the contractors in charge to please tar this road, so that the menace of people just parking everywhere, turning it to market would be removed, so there are so many things I believed that the FCT Minister should do; including the refuse in some areas are so dirty. Th ey should invite more people to begin to clear refuse on the streets of Abuja. What is your message to the market women?
My message to the market women is that they should stop exploiting people, they should stop surcharging people; like putting things under their measures to cheat the buyers, they should stop it, they should be fair and honest their money will come, you don’t buy things at a price of maybe 100 Naira and then sell it for say 500 Naira, it’s absurd… I believe that when money goes up things can go up, when it comes down things should come down also.
It’s not happening in Nigeria, they want to maintain that price there were selling things when money was very high and when things come down they don’t want to come down; it is not right, the market women should be fair because they too are mothers and fathers, they too understand what the Country is like, so they should be fair to people.
What is your message to the Nation? My message to the Nation is that everybody should calm down, shield your sword, we need peace in this Country we don’t need division. People that are crying for division should please calm down, Nigeria should be one it is one Nigeria; I remembered when Gowon was the President “we used to say we should go on with one Nigeria” I want to still continue to say we should go on with one Nigeria, because that is our strength, if we divide ourselves, they said “United we stand Divided we fall.’’ let us be together, let us unite as one and have peace. Th at is my own message for everybody
