A non-profit organization, Akin Fadeyi Foundation, is set to launch a competition for women to stimulate gender inclusive leadership conversation in Nigeria.

The event tagged ‘What Women Can Do’ will start with a pre-event media conversation on July 19 at 11 a.m. and will feature media and public policy actors and practitioners, including feature editors of newspapers and online news platforms, alongside women leaders.

According to a press statement signed by the organisation’s Executive Director, Akin Fadeyi, on Wednesday, the aim of the event is to beam the searchlight on the exclusion of women in governance.

For instance, despite women contesting as aspirants during the recently concluded presidential primaries of political parties, none emerged as a candidate.

Also, data from a 2021 Global Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked Nigeria in 139th position out of 153 countries, the worst ranking since 2006.

In tackling this, Mr Fadeyi said the event will speak to how “leadership would be a lot more impactful when women are empowered to act as equal stakeholders in national development.”

It will also “encourage women to endure in their leadership ambitions despite the present turns in Nigerian politics, to reaffirm their capabilities as equally endowed social actors who are not intellectually subordinate in any way, and to stimulate public conversation on the need for gender parity in the access to power.”

Details of the competition

Competitors are expected to make leadership pitches and speak to any topic of interest from agriculture to education, healthcare, power generation, science and innovation.

From this, ten finalists will be selected, the top five finalists will be rewarded with different gifts on the basis of the strength, innovativeness, uniqueness and acceptability of their pitches and the other five finalists will go away with consolation prizes.

App for election monitoring

Mr Fadeyi also informed that the foundation will deploy its FlagIt app for election observation, monitoring and reporting.

This, according to him, will deepen the work on political and social accountability as the 2023 general elections draw near.