By Vivian Onyebukwa
Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ), a Non-Profit Organization that seeks to inspire, empower, advocate, and connect women, has announced the take-off of its women advocacy program.
It has also inaugurated a committee to plan and execute the programs on its behalf. Drawing on its extensive women’s community-building history, the WIMBIZ advocacy committee’s current intervention is to support the 2022/2023 pre-election advocacy.
Their mandate is centred around the sensitization of women and positively influencing their attitude towards the exercise of their civic duties during the upcoming general elections in 2023. The campaign centres around informing and reminding women about their voting history, their rights, responsibilities, and rewards regarding voting, and encouraging women to perform their civic duty. The theme for this year’s conference is, “Women and Civic Duties, Voters’ Attitude and Elections in Nigeria”. It will also feature a report, infomercials, and a mini-historical documentary on Nigeria’s suffragettes.
Commenting on the WIMBIZ Advocacy pillar as well as the 2022/2023 advocacy theme, the 2022 Advocacy Committee Chairperson, Ronke Onadeko, said the goal of WIMBIZ in its advocacy efforts is to increase women’s awareness of our historical journey in public and private participation and politics, and advocate improvements in inclusion, participation, and visibility on all related indices.
With the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 10 for gender equality and reducing inequalities respectively in view, the WIMBIZ advocacy pillar is focused on engaging both the public and private sectors and individuals through strategic partnerships, collaborations, and direct engagement while preparing females to position themselves to contribute to nation-building and performance of their civic duties.
According to Onadeko, the goal for public sector engagement is to have a higher representation of women developed, equipped, and positioned to increase their representation at all levels of government and in politics for both appointive and elective roles from 3.8% to 30% by 2030 and to increase the representation of women in the corporate sector occupying senior and executive positions.
Since the inauguration of the pioneer WIMBIZ Women on Boards Advocacy committee in 2018 and followed by the WIMBIZ Private and Public Sector Advocacy Committees in 2020, some of the highlights and successful interventions includes, The WIMBIZ Women on Boards Mentoring Program, The Women on Boards Training Institute, and The WIMBIZ Private Sector Gender Equity, Equality Scorecard “The Scorecard” in Partnership with PWC, and The WIMBIZ Public Procurement training in partnership with Nigeria Export Promotion Council. WIMBIZ advocacy initiatives are championed by standing committees staffed by loyal Associates in collaboration with WIMBIZ HQ.
According to Hansatu Adegbite, Executive Director of WIMBIZ, the organisation has developed valuable partnerships over the years and is operating with a leaner structure as a result of the era of the leadership transition of the organisation. “Partners such as sponsors, donors, media partners, stakeholders, as well as WIMBIZ associates, and life members are critical to the continued vision attainment of the organization,”.
She said over the past 20 years, key learnings from past conferences on diverse gender-focused initiatives, cutting across business, economy, social sector, politics, and equal opportunities, had helped in inspiring more women to attain leadership positions as well as build key partnerships.
This, according to her, is why as always, this year’s speakers have been carefully selected based on asset-enhancing strategies they have to share with the delegates for collective nation-building, while the theme aptly speaks to a new era with a fired-up mission.
Notable and important people in the society, will be speakers at the event. They include, award-winning author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie as Keynote Speaker; President/Founder of Salice Demuren Foundation, GTBank’s first female Chairman as well as the first female Director of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Osaretin Demuren as Conference Chairperson, former President of the Nigerian Senate, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki, and Commissioner of the Lagos State Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Cecilia Bolaji Dada.
The WIMBIZ annual conference, is the leading gathering of female business owners, private sector professionals, public sector leaders, and social sector practitioners worldwide.
Over 15,000 women have been delegates at the conference since 2002.
Past speakers include the wife of Nigeria’s Vice President, Dolapo Osinbajo; Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Former Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, and Africa’s first Nobel Prize for Literature recipient, Wole Soyinka.
The 21st annual conference, is scheduled to hold in-person and online from November 3rd-4th 2022 at Eko Hotels & Suites in Lagos, with digital streaming platforms available for its virtual audience.