From Charity Nwakaudu, Abuja

The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has pledged to run a women-inclusive government if elected.

Adebayo made this known on Saturday evening, at a three-day conference with presidential candidates of political parties with the theme: “Good Governance for Better Nigeria,” organised by the Nigerian Women 4 Good Governance in Abuja.

According to him, most of Nigeria’s problems would be solved only if families and women are empowered.

He said, “If you want to empower families, you have to empower women. I’m also an employer of labour. I became an employer of labour when I was 22 years old so I have been employing people over time. In the course of time, I have employed women and men.

“If you find out from organisations that I’ve been running for many years before I thought I will be in politics, 80-85 per cent of my managers are women.

“It is not because they know how to dress elegantly, it’s because they know how to manage and care. The truth of the matter is that Nigerian society and the Nigerian government don’t look alike.

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“In Nigerian society, the women carry the verdict and the women run the show but in the Nigerian government, the men take everything. This has to change. If we can listen to women, we will know the problem of Nigeria and solve them.”

Adebayo emphasised the need for the Nigerian government to operate like a “housewife,” saying that it will save Nigeria from many troubles.

He said, “A government should be like a housewife. If you want to have a government that will work in Nigeria, you have to fashion the government like a housewife. The government will wake up and think of how people will eat and go to school.

“With the way I approach governance, women have a major role to play because I grew up well-taken care of. In fact, my attitude to governance arose from the fact that I grew up in innocence.

“The problems of government did not affect me that much because of the family from which I came.

“And my aim, therefore, is to make sure that however long I stay in power or government, whether long or short, I will empower families. Because failure to empower families is the problem of Nigeria.”