Nigeria’s Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, has disclosed that no fewer than 3,008 are awaiting execution in various prisons across Nigeria.
Speaking at the 21st Regular National Council Meeting on Women Affairs held in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, Aregbesola regretted the involvement of women in capital crimes that lead to capital punishment and stressed the need for women to be given the necessary leverage for self-actualisation.
According to him, women have the least figure of 56 while the male counterparts constitute the bulk of the offenders awaiting the hangman noose.
Stressing the essential role women play in the development of society, the minister tasked the womenfolk to be in the vanguard of lending strong helping hands to rescue their kinds from poverty as a way of insulating them from crimes.
“Women need to help themselves in their own emancipation,” he charged and commended interventionist efforts by the Ministry of Women Affairs in the task of lifting the women through empowerment various schemes.
He noted that the ranks of women in public and private sector jobs have increased from 35 per cent in 1990 to 45 per cent presently, adding that though the figures of women in paid jobs have improved, additional steps should be taken to ensure gender equality.
“In many of our communities, women still face discrimination based on cultural and traditional practices. Negative and cruel stereotypes still remain of women as sex objects and human reproduction machines.
“Women are less likely to access education, economic opportunities and suffer discrimination, if not outright exclusion, in inheritance than men,” he noted.
Women, he pointed out, face a lot of discrimination, adding that “women are less likely to than men to own land, even when they constitute the largest workforce in agriculture and rural lands.”
“It is very painful that women still suffer discrimination and pay disparity in paid jobs as they are likely to receive less pay for doing the same job as men, even when they are demonstrably better,” he stressed.
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