An educationist and a supporter of the Labour Party presidential candidate Mrs Appolonia Ijeoma Adiele has said that among those who contested the February 25 presidential election, only Mr Peter Obi, has the unquestionable capacity to address the multisectoral challenges plaguing the women.
In an interview with newsmen on the ongoing cases at the Presidential Election Tribunal in Abuja, Mrs Adiele enumerated the challenges of the Nigerian women to include high cost child education, health hazards posed by lack of toilet facities in public schools, the use of charcoal or firewood for cooking due to unaffordable prices of cooking gas, kerosine and now worsened by the recent removal of fuel subsidy.
She said: “You know I’m a woman and an educationist. At the university I read education. So when I’m talking about education, I know what I’m saying. I have been a private school teacher where I tutor children, I know the challenges. I know the difference between private schoold and public schools.
“As a woman, women are suffering a lot in training their children in Nigeria. It is worrisome that two percent of the consolidated revenue of the federal government goes into the basic education, for the provision of free compulsory primary and junior secondary education for Nigerian children.
“But unfortunately, it is the private schools that provide reasonable primary and junior secondary education opportunity for Nigerian children today, thereby subjecting women to the challenge of paying exorbitant school frees for the children to attend these private schools.
“I wonder how my fellow women would cope with the removal of fuel subsidy and increased cost of fuel and transportation in Nigeria. What I’m trying to say is that most children go to school with transportation in the morning, seven days of the week, they go to school five days which means if they have been using 300 transportation everyday, it has increased to N600, some of them N900, some of them N1,200. It is almost triple of the money used before .
“So I know my fellow women are not finding things easy. But to face the fact, in Nigeria, most mothers are single mothers, widows. There are homes where women cater for the entire family. So what I’m trying to say is that women are suffering so much.
“The girl child primary and secondary education sector is exposed to health hazard because most of the government owned primary and secondary have no decent toilet facilities. That’s why when you go to most hospitals, you see infections here and there among the females. It starts off from all these toilets.
“We also have the climate change. Women are the victims if carbondioxide or smoke through the use of charcoal or firewood for cooking because it is a natural thing that we women cook everyday to feed our families and when we cannot afford gas, we cannot afford kerosine, we use charcoal or firewood, thereby exposing ourselves to vision or sight problems, lung problems. Most of these problems lead to blindness, most of these lung problems lead to death.
The lady who said she had a strong belief that Obi won the last presidential election, expresed the confidence that justice would prevail at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
“So women voted for Peter Obi and he actually won the election and that is why we have been visiting the Election Petition Tribunal in solidarity with him so that we can reclaim our mandate, she said.
“I believe that Mr Peter Obi has the capacity to address these challenges, among others.”