Over 30,000 Nigerian women are said to have acquired equity rights in a corporation known as Women-In-Oil (WIO) floated to explore opportunities in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
WIO is said to be an attempt to capture the 35 percent quota policy of the President Goodluck Jonathan administration to empower women beyond political appointments.
Already, prominent women including some chief judges of states in the oil region, mothers of top ministers, and other high net-worth women are said to be flocking to WIO to have an early advantage.
WIO is also said to be a bold private sector response to the call by the Jonathan administration for the private sector to take initiative from various government policies.
WIO is an affiliate of the New Nation Organisation (NNO), a platform created by a US-trained Nigerian investor and business management expert, Charles Dukwe, to create jobs as well as solve social problems in Nigeria.
Unveiling the workings of the organisation, 39-year-old Dukwe said women in Nigeria can now heave a sigh of relief by taking advantage of the 21 engagement areas (products) most of which are for profit.
Dukwe who poured lamentations over the decay in the Nigerian social sector, said his organisation has numerous foreign partners for operations in many African countries, saying NNO now covers 21 states of the country and would have presence in all the states by end of April.
According to the founder, the N120,000 requirement for equity participation has been brought down by the organisation to enable more Nigerian women own shares in an oil prospecting corporation, saying any woman seeking participation in the oil sector would only just register with N8000 which he said can be paid in installments.
The offer, he said, is being made to complement Jonathan’s administration that has, according to him, taken the greatest step in Nigerian history toward gender equality in the entrepreneurial world, women’s right, liberation and empowerment.
The New Nation, he said, is now covering the east and west of Nigeria, and has now launched its presence in the north beginning with Kaduna State, hoping to step up operations in all parts of northern Nigeria, all in the bid to empower ordinary Nigerians, especially the women
IGNATIUS CHUKWU & SABY ELEMBA
