SDG 'Goal 5': THE PASSION JOKE ORELOPE HAS EVER LIVED FOR -- READING ALOUD CHAPTER 1 OF THE BOOK: "ONCE A GIRL-CHILD"

by Razaq Adedeji Jimoh

Today is 11th of October, the calender date for the global celebration of International Girl Child Day ("IGCD". It would seem there is a curious coincidence of Her birthday with this day. In the last edition of Civics Weekly magazine Project JOFIEC -Joke Orelope For Inspiration to Every Child - was unveiled as an "Annual Dialogue Series" aimed at giving the right orientation to Nigerian youths in matters of politics. This day of IGCD thus presents the opportunity to informally unveil the inspirational book material entitled "Once a Girl-Child" as one means through which JOFIEC intends to play a role in pursuit of the attainment of 'Goal 5' of the SDG. Let's read on!

By the brief of her assignment as Senior Special Assistant to the President on Sustainable Development Goals (SSAP-SDG), she has the task to drive Nigeria to achieving 17 Goals that will put the country among the league of egalitarian society by year 2030. The project which was developed by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations (“UN”) has the Goals itemised perhaps in order of priorities for the necessity of life as follow: Goal 1: No Poverty; Goal 2: Zero Hunger; Goal 3: Good Health and Well Being; Goal 4: Quality Education; Goal 5: Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women and Girls; Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation; Goal 7: Affordable and Clean Energy; Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth; Goal 9: Industry Innovation and Infrastructure; Goal 10: Reduce Inequalities within and among the Countries; Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities; Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production; Goal 13: Climate Action; Goal 14: Life under Water; Goal 15: Life on Land; Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions; Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals.

It must first of all be emphasised here that enlisting all the 17 Goals is deliberate. It goes to underscore the core objective of this book – “Once a Girl-child” (to wit Project JOFIEC) – as a cause to raise awareness and passion of teenage youths for SDG. This beholds to the consciousness that in few years ahead from now, these youth shall become engaged in various fields of employment and appointment covered by this set of goals. In matters of awareness, it absolute essentiality and relevance is in the fact that about 98 percent of even enlightened adult Nigerians may not be able to connect the establishment of Ministry of Marine and Blue Sea Economy to ‘Goal 14’. In matters of the passion, the absolute essentiality is to ignite the desirable creativity and commitment to make Nigeria achieve all the goals through trans-generational nexus to the set year.

Example of this power of passion being leveraged by opportunity of participation in politics is what this book aims to deliver through the somewhat political activism of the personality for the inspiration, Her Excellency, Adejoke Victorial Orelope-Adefulire (OFR), using ‘Goal 5’ as case study of the passion she has ever lived for.

From the overview report of the UN on Goal 5, only a tragic conclusion may be discerned about the feasibility of achieving it in many centuries to come. It is believed, in its words, that “the World is not on track to achieve gender equality by the set year 2030” with the current attitude towards the implementation. Further therein, it observes that given this attitude, “it will take the World 300years to end Child Marriage; 286years to close gaps in legal protection and remove discrimination laws; and 140years to achieve equal representation in leadership positions in the work place”.

In offering the first and basic step in solution to all this, the UN body says: “Legislated Gender Quotas are (the) effective (means) to achieve equality in politics”. It says 30.9 per cent of countries in the world currently apply legislated quotas in their politics while 21.2 per cent of the countries has no such quotas. This may imply that Nigeria stands among the 47.9 per cent of the countries that have quotas but refuse to apply it. That is only if we are to reckon with the long existing National Gender Policy (NGP) and the recent consequential jurisprudence of the Court’s declarative judgement for enforcement of the Gender Affirmative Action with 35 per cent quotas contained in the NGP. It was delivered on Wednesday, April 5, 2022.

To understand the core value of this judgement of the Abuja Federal High Court in the context of one strong step for Nigeria to achieve Goal 5, it matters that the suit was instituted by a league of women-driven civil society group as the applicant. They averred before the court that Nigerian women had suffered “various forms of discrimination in matters of appointments into key positions of government”.

Their lawyer, Funmi Falana, argued that women were being discriminated against as a result of the belief that women were inferior to men. She pointed attention of the Court to the NGP as an existing affirmative document that already allocated 35 percent of all appointments to women but the government had serially and consistently violated it. To complement this, she also cited the sections of Nigeria’s Constitution and those of international charters that should visibly give strength to NGP to be operational.

She said: “Section 14(3) of the Nigeria Constitution says there shall be no predominance of persons from a few states or form of ethnic or other sectional groups in that government or in any of its agencies… Article 19 of the African Charter (also) specifies that no predominance in appointment of any set of people shall exist”.

In the premises to his judgement, Justice Donatus Okorowo dismissed the argument of the defendant (Federal Government) that the section of the Constitution referred to by the plaintiff/applicant was not justiciable. He said the Attorney General of the Federation standing as the sole defendant in the case “failed to disprove the material allegations contained in the affidavit, and led no credible evidence to debunk material evidence of the plaintiff”.

He finally ruled that: “Dismantling barriers to women’s participation in public spheres has been achieved through progressive interpretation of municipal laws and international obligations and treaties. Formulating policies based on sex, stereotyping and feudal and patriarchal traditions will no longer be tolerated due to the supremacy of the constitutional values…

“The court is duty bound to uphold the 2006 Affirmative Action for women. This court is not expected to achieve less for Nigerian women, since the constitutional obligation of the court is to apply the law”. With that, the 35% Quotas was secured as a declarative judgement.

That was the Nigerian Judiciary doing its bit towards achieving gender equality and empowerment of women and girls as pushed by a non-state actor from the civil society organisations.

Thence in the words of Nigerian First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu; it is revealing that the new Federal Government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not one to impede any progress towards it or moot any action to slow down the moving trends of the country towards the achievement plans. Senator Tinubu had consistently reiterated that her office would aptly rise in support of any agenda the UN may bring as a cause to woman development. Such was a time she received the UN team led by the Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Mr. Mathias Schmale, on Thursday, July 27, 2023. Then, she raised a fundamental question whether Nigerian women were ever ready to help themselves in pursuit of this Goal.

She said: “I want more women in decision making positions like legislative arms… However, are the women ready to sacrifice? We (women) are the ones that need to stand up to help ourselves. Education is very vital and I don’t believe that a woman cannot get all that she wants once she is educated”.

It should therefore be easier to see from here why the ‘Goal 5’ may appear to be one passion the former Deputy Governor of Lagos State lives for in due course. From all fundamental pieces of evidence she has evinced in the line of her service career, particularly to achieve the SDG Goals, her passion for Goal 5 lives in her. In other words, one might want to think this passion was ignited by her eventual appointment as the SSAP-SDGs on March 16, 2016. Her public service history will however be apt to contrast it as well. The incendiary had evidently sparked innately since she emerged in the sphere of public service in Lagos way back in 1992.

For one, her creative programmes for the empowerment of women and youths as Commissioner for Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation (WAPA) in 2003 to 2011 will count foremost. Her self-initiated idea of skill acquisition for women and youth was quite imparting with instructive outcomes. This gave birth to the many Lagos State Skill Acquisition Centres across the 20 local governments of the State. Alimosho Federal Constituency alone has two of them. At the proposed Town Hall Meeting of APC Presidential Candidate’s Delegate with the Business Community in Alimosho, planned by Civics Weekly magazine during the campaigns for election, not less than 300 graduates of the two centres were to be part of the event as CEOs and business owners. The programme was unfortunately botched by the Central Bank’s killer policy of cash mopping from circulation.

Joke Orelope, as she is fondly called in the political parlance, did not limit her empowerment idea to the skill acquisition alone. She went further to design and create what this author will here describe as “ijeun agba” – literally to mean regular source of income for the elders. And what could that be? She established a combined business of car-wash with pay public toilet services, leveraging on the resources of community borehole she would complementarily establish in all densely populated areas, particularly near community markets across the state. While the policy may project the empowerment of regular income generation and the human convenience service values the more, the policy document she made about 18 years ago was said to have highlighted its consistency with what today stands at ‘Goal 6’: Clean Water and (Environmental) Sanitation.

According to a reliable witness to the policy drafting, “the idea emerged at a time the World Health Organisation (WHO) opened the campaign to bring attention of governments all over the world to the menace and ills of ‘Open Defeacation’ as a matter of health emergency”. Then and till now, Nigeria still ranks high among the countries guilty of this abnormal culture. It only matters that she was able to have its problematic prescience through her own creative imaginations.

To imagine the resources being deployed in all this is to know that she could exhibit all this leadership potential and project the altruistic service value because she took the bold step to join politics without looking at the ills of politics for hindrance. And given all she has done in service to her fatherland through her progressive rise from the locals to international sphere through the art of governance, she is in every way worth a compendium of woman in politics for inspiration to every youth in the realm of upper teenage to middle youth age of both gender. This is the core mission JOFIEC is creatively designed to serve.

If we must evaluate the foregoing actions – done and intending or pending - on steps toward achieving ‘Goal 5’, it should be discernible that they are products of state actors. The involvement and partnership of non-state actors should no less be imperative as much as being a considerable necessity. This book should be seen as one coming from this direction.

In concept, it takes root from the will of necessity to appreciate woman as an outgrowth of a girl-child as man from “boy-child”. Thus that while we pay attention to the woman’s needs today, we need to also focus on how the future woman will not be a victim of the lacks of today’s woman.

In deep analysis of this book – Once a Girl-child – as a resource material for the JOFIEC’s implementation, it seems poised and readily valuable to impart the girl-child through the affective domain from the title. It will nevertheless be a completely wrong view to ignore the book’s coverage in its holistic form for its relevance to the recently initiated advocacy on needs to pay attention to the “boy-child” too by the First Lady of Lagos State, Dr. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, in so far it tends to demystify politics in order to encourage participation of more youths in the governance around them.

Finally, to take general overview of this resource book, the effective outcomes one should anticipate in every teenage youth of Senior Secondary School that shall be privileged to participate in the complementary JOFIEC’s seminar initiatives include: 1) immediate interest in politics around them; 2) inspiration that fires the can-do spirit; and 3) a burning fire to play leadership roles in the community. May God stand in guidance of Nigerian youths.