Be agents of change, Ondo women charged

Women in Ondo State have been charged to be agents of change and be innovative in order to sustain socio-economic development that would help to drive the state and the country.

Apart from this, women were urged to be creative in thinking, curious and have strategic plans and find ways of making themselves relevant stakeholders in decisions and policies that will transform the state and country at large.

This charge was given at  a conference organised by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) in conjunction with Doze Needy Education Foundation held in Akure, Ondo State capital.

Speaking during the conference, with the theme: “Balance for Better,” a university don, from Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Prof. Helen Olayinka Ogunsuyi, maintained that the only way women could be relevant in a country such as Nigeria was to be innovative and advised women to explore their huge potentials of innovations in order to bring around the long awaited transformation in all strata of development in the country.

BREAKING: Lawan names principal officers for 9th Senate 

She said: “Regardless of colour, age, tradition, class, race, profession, one thing is very common to all categories of women, and this is the ability to multi-task.

“The power of multi-tasking is one of the vectors that motivates innovation. I am bold to say that every woman is innovative because the strength to combine diverse functions at the same time and accomplish them does not lie with a lazy and nonentity person.

“Therefore, all we need to do is to take the right path to arrive at the destination of relevance through innovative contributions to issues of concern at all levels,” she said.

The guest speaker noted that women could be relevant in the society if they grow themselves and understand the area they need to develop and improve upon and justify their intention of gender parity when their contributions were convincingly impacting the society positively.

She, however, urged women to discover their potentials and always be at their best.

Another guest speaker, Olamide Falana, emphasised the need for women not to allow fear to diminish their strength, wisdom or hinder them from trying new things, nothing that women have been relegated to the background because they were stuck in performing a single role.

“We live the same lives over and over again, there is no passion, no sense of purpose, no spark. So, we gradually get stuck into the same routine day in day out,” she said.

She said for women to break out of the space and be better, they must upgrade themselves which required them to learn, relearn and unlearn.

According to her, women must take care of their health, exercise regularly, eat well, relax and have good sources of income in order to be in a position to contribute their quota.

The organiser of the conference, however, said the aim of the event was to advance gender equality and empowerment of women, particularly in the areas of social protection system, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure.

They noted that without women’s empowerment and gender equality, societies will not be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and their full development potential saying women had shown greater resolve in nation building but their needs had been overlooked severally.