Several Nigerian women have been credited with making waves in the professions internationally in the last one year.
The usual suspects like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Arunma Oteh and Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie have not disappointed in their chosen fields and world affairs.
While Okonjo-Iweala got on the board of Twitter, former Securities and Exchange Commission Director-General Oteh left her role as World Bank Vice-President and Treasurer and has left for Oxford University as an academic scholar in January 2019.
Recently, brilliant Nigerian lady, Stella Chinelo Emelife emerged the best graduating student in the University of Mysore, India with MSc Chemistry. Following that feat, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, an autonomous organisation of the Government of India, extended her scholarship because of her exceptional achievement.
Chinelo received a record 20 Gold Medals and 5 cash awards at the 99th Convovation of the university.
The 28-year-old graduated from the Department of Chemistry and received the Maximum Gold medals available in the institution. Nobody in the history of that university has ever won 20 gold medals.
The young Anambra State indigene intends to pursue research in Cancer to find treatment for its cure.
Following on the heels of Chinelo’s announcement came the news that another Nigerian lady, Wendy Okoro has become the first black woman to bag PhD in Aerospace Engineering.
The 30-year-old Wendy has already achieved a lot in her career before getting the doctorate degree in aerospace engineering.
Her career has already seen her work at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a United States agency responsible for the civilian space programme as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.
Wendy received her bachelors degree and doctorate degrees from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2010 and 2015 respectively.
Her achievement is worthy of celebration knowing that working in NASA is no mean feat.
Blazing the trail internationally in another hitherto male dominated field is Captain Adeola Ogunmola Sowemimo who also recently became the first Nigerian female pilot at Qatar Airways. She is also the first Nigerian female pilot to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is an American long-haul, mid-size wide-body, twin-engine jet airliner manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Its variants seat 242 to 335 passengers in typical three-class seating configurations. It is the first airliner with an airframe constructed primarily of composite materials.
Adeola joins the league of other trail-blazing African women like Kenya’s Captain Irene Koki and Ethiopia’s Captain Amsale Gulau as female Dreamliner pilots and she has etched her name into the history books as a leading woman in Africa.
There is room for our women and girls to always prove themselves internationally. But do they get the same opportunities at home? The discrimination in the national space makes it difficult for our women who crave for level playing field instead of the tokenism that has become part of our national life.
Female candidates in our elections have to fight not only political opponents but also a system that is still quite backward in throwing crumbs to the female gender in the name of affirmative action and the Beijing Declaration of 1995. Even these declarations do not seem to have worked in Nigeria because we still regard women as the weaker sex who need to be treated with a soft touch.
A pointer to this failure is that the incoming 9th National Assembly will be seen as one with the fewest number of women. It doesn’t even look like there is a female Senator at all, although there are still tribunal cases featuring women who are challenging INEC results.
What our women folk are saying by their achievements on the world stage is that they can stand on their own and toe-to-toe, too, with the men folk in education, public service, the judiciary and the professions, as long as discriminatory policies are dumped in the dust bin. That is why they are thriving in the international system and in other countries where these archaic policies do not exist any more.
What a man can do……..
Image credit: The Hindu
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Ogie Eboigbe, veteran journalist, broadcaster and public affairs specialist writes and analyses current and historical issues with a ‘wise pen’.
