Conflict: Amina Salihu

“Gender has to be looked at as smart economics, because a lot of the time people think it is just to push for justice. So, it becomes a bit more difficult to convince policy makers, especially men who do not have this women’s liberation reality because they are not women and do not understand why they need to plan with women or look out for them. Even to reach your own development targets, you need women because they are the ones who would raise the children that you are looking at as the future human resources; they are the ones who run the homes.

“The second reason is that the women of Nigeria themselves make up 50% of the population. How do you hope to make progress if you are not meeting the needs of 50% of your population? The national average for maternal mortality is 545 out of every 100,000, but you know that it is just an average. In the northern part of Nigeria, over 1500 women die out of every 100,000. Look at the conflict and how people are being displaced. Families have been decimated and women are everything rolled into one and you must address their needs. Women are drivers of growth, whether in the family or in the community.”

Amina Salihu is Senior Program Officer with the MacArthur Foundation Africa Office. A consultant, farmer and feminist, Amina was a lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Program Coordinator at the Centre for Democracy and Development, Senior Special Assistant to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, and Coordinator, DFID / UKAid’s Coalitions for Change (C4C) Programme. She was gender technical team member, for the Vision 20 2020 policy development process, and for the review of the National Gender Policy, 2006. Amina is immediate past Chair of the Kaduna State Rehabilitation Board for Persons with Disabilities, and is honorary adviser to numerous government, private sector and civil society organisations on gender and policy. She is technical designer and advisor to the EU RoLAC programme on the design of a web based sexual offender register for Nigeria. Amina is a member of the Governing Council of Ekiti State University, Nigeria.