65,000 women have benefited from empowerment programs in the state, according to information provided by Mrs. Bolaji Dada, the Lagos State Commissioner for Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.
The commissioner made this announcement while participating on a panel at the 21st WIMBIZ Annual Conference, with the topic “Firing Forward: The Future in Focus.”
The majority of the empowerment programs ran once a year before Dada took office, but she was able to get them to run four times annually.
She remarked, “Before I came into office, most of the empowerment programmes in the state ran just once a year, I knew that I had to change that, because how many people can benefit from a once-a-year programme?
“The Micro-Enterprise Support Scheme for example now runs four times a year and has successfully empowered 8,885 women so far.
“We also noticed that most of our women do not pay attention to their bodies, so we decided to start free medical checks for women in the state and as a result, 2,750 women have benefitted so far.
“In total, over 65,000 women have benefitted from our collective empowerment programmes in the state.”
In the fourth plenary session, Dada spoke alongside four other women: Funmilayo Arowoogun, president of the NECA Network of Entrepreneurial Women; Beatrice Eyong, UN Women representative in Nigeria and ECOWAS; Meridian Maskara; and Oludayo Sanya, executive secretary of the MTN Nigeria Foundation, who also served as the session’s moderator.
