The Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria has challenged Niger Delta women to rise up and be counted as major instruments for the restoration of peace, community building, stability and sustainable economic development of the region.
The company said the women could do this by deploying their God-given natural material instinct to defend, nurture, and build the young to add impetus to the post-amnesty healing process that would eventually lead to peace and development in the area.
Speaking in Port Harcourt at a Town Hall Session for Women Opinion Leaders in the Niger Delta, Regional Executive Vice President, Shell Exploration and Production, Africa, Mrs. Ann Pickard, said that women in the region were living under extremely difficult conditions in very unsettling times of global economic recession, and militancy in the Niger Delta.
Pickard noted that the twin forces have unleashed underdevelopment, unemployment, militancy, insecurity and fear, saying that since “women have historically carried the burden of the physical and psychological suffering that comes during a society’s hard times,” they should adjust and hold up the family and community to give them the momentum to bounce back to growth and progress again.
The regional executive vice president stated that in all her life, she had always seen many ordinary women doing extraordinary and remarkable things, adding that Niger Delta women have shown themselves as driving agents for national development, and encouraged the women to keep up the spirit of hope and determination in order to turn things around.
She highlighted four key issues of financial independence through micro-credit schemes, education, skills acquisition and healthcare as aspects of SPDC’s community empowerment initiatives aimed at strengthening the economic capacity and capability of host communities, and challenged the women to take active interest and key into the programmes to facilitate the development of their communities.
According to the Shell ‘iron lady’, small scale enterprises play a key role in developing local economies as they provide employment, generate income, produce goods and services for local consumers, and ultimately reduce poverty, adding that Shell recognizes this, and has for 11 years, driven a revolving micro-credit programme in more than 200 rural communities of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Imo and Rivers States, in an attempt to stimulate and boost economic activities.

Susan Nwikhana