The leadership of the Nigeria Union of Teachers has called on unions at all levels of educational institution to rise to the global challenge of ensuring gender equality.
National president of NUT, Dr Nasiru Idris, made the call while declaring open a three-day gender sensitization workshop for West African Women Education Network (WAWEN) in English-speaking countries in Abuja.
Speaking on the theme, ‘Gender Equality in Unions Means Union Democracy’, the NUT boss said his administration would continue to prioritize gender issues as manifested recently in the election of two female vice presidents out of five vice presidential offices during the union’s last national delegates conference.
Court reaffirms Omo-Agege’s candidacy for APC
“All unions have to work towards making gender equality a priority for a higher democratic culture in our trade union practice.
“The struggle to mainstream gender into all our union’s activities and programmes is vigorous through serious mobilisation and sensitisation of our members for wider participation at the branches and state levels of our union, from where the national leadership takes its roots,” he said.
The chief regional coordinator, Assibi Napoe, commended the efforts, saying that West African women coming to meet regularly at the continental level under the umbrella of WAWEN would help to overcome many challenges.
She charged women to remain focused in union participation in order to put themselves to the task and fight for equality and discrimination against them.
On her part, the WAWEN coordinator, Salamatu Aliu, enjoined women to always work together and present themselves as one in unions.
“We know that women make the unions strong and the fact that we have not been given the position we deserve now should not put us down. We should try as much as possible to continue to push and one day we will get there,” she said.
The meeting which had in attendance representatives from other West African caountries was to further establish decisions to make WAWEN functional for better cooperation and closer integration among Anglophone West African countries.
and then