Giving kongo of rice, stipends, is not the empowerment women need — Sekinat Hammed

Sekinat Hammed, the founder of Network for Inclusion of People with Special Needs (NIPSN), a pioneering organization committed to empowering individuals with disabilities, is a woman that is passionate about women empowerment and grassroots development. She speaks with ADEOLA OJO on why misconceptions about women empowerment continue to thrive, the role of education and various forms that misconception reflects.

What are some common misconceptions about women’s empowerment in Nigeria, and how can we address them?

There are many misconceptions and wrong impressions about women’s empowerment in Nigeria. This is reflected in various ways including conflating it with superficial poverty alleviation, focusing only on women’s domestic roles, and assuming it means women are inherently weak or subservient. A more accurate understanding is that empowerment involves providing women with access to economic resources, education, and political participation to challenge restrictive socio-cultural norms and achieve true equality, but this is not the case in Nigeria.

In our society, it is believed that once you pack kongo of rice and garri and put two thousand naira in an envelope for 50 women, you have done well. So they design uniform Ankara or polo shirts for women, gather them together and give them food that they will finish in two days and say they have done empowerment. This is not empowerment at all.

What is empowerment in your view?

Empowerment is teaching people skills to be able to fund their lifestyle, giving them training on how they can be independent and make ends meet. It can be giving people tools to work with for a trade they have learnt, but the basic about empowerment is giving them courage and something to stand on.

There have been cases where tools provided were sold to feed, what do you think about this?

It happens and it has happened to me before. This happens when you do not monitor what you did or when you didn’t carry out enough background check to know what people need. To carry out empowerment in communities, you need to go with professionals that can ascertain that the people have the skills they claim they have and are qualified for the tools. Some people just lie that they have the skill so they can get the equipment and sell. They do not know the value because they do not have the skills.

To properly carry out empowerment in communities, you must as a matter of importance visit the communities, find out the challenges and decide what works for their peculiarities. Also, you must go back, monitor and retrain the people. You must be invested in the project and not just the photo ops for the day. The idea that women’s empowerment is simply giving women money or small business opportunities in petty trade, rather than a transformative process of achieving agency and control over their lives, is wrong and should be stopped.

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What’s your assessment of empowerment in the Nigerian society?

Empowerment is often misunderstood as a solely economic or political issue, neglecting the deep-rooted cultural and societal beliefs that undermine women’s positions in our society. This is based on many factors including the belief that a woman’s primary role is to please and serve men, which limits their perceived potential beyond the home. Also, women make it easy by always claiming to be tired after engaging in normal activities. This fosters the impression that they are weak and can’t aspire for more. Women are often conditioned to believe they are weak and inferior to men, a notion that needs to be corrected to enable true self-empowerment.

What are the challenges that women face in achieving empowerment in Nigeria, and how can these be overcome?

They are many and you can say women themselves because we allow this to continue. There are religious, traditional and societal beliefs and expectations that limit women. More importantly, a lack of education — and I don’t mean classroom education. Women need to have a mind reset before they can get true empowerment because you can only recognize and demand for what you under