Commission Launches Women Empowerment New Policy

The Energy Commission of Nigeria on Monday in Abuja, inaugurated the Gender Audit of the National Energy Policy (NEP) to address the needs of women as key players in the sector.

Inaugurating the policy, the Director-General of the Commission, Prof. Abubakar Sambo, said women in Nigeria had been relegated to the background for too long.

He said there was the need for Nigeria to adopt measures that would ensure that women and the girl child spent fewer hours collecting cooking fuel and fetching water.

Sambo said if women were allowed to waste a lot of time fetching firewood and water, there would be little time left for them to do other things such as learning.

“We need to ensure that women and the girl child spend fewer hours in collecting firewood; in collecting dung; in collecting all kinds of materials for cooking and also in fetching water.

“We can do so by coming with better cooking appliances, and better cooking fuels; we can also do so by bringing better technologies for making water available.

“This, we can do, if we look at the energy policy document and bring appropriate strategic actions to be taken; that is why I am in 100 per cent support of the document named: “Gender Audit of the National Energy Policy” and it is my pleasure to launch it.’’

Presenting a review of the audit, Mr Chike Chikwendu, a consultant with the Commission, pointed out that the exercise intended to identify gender gaps in the country’s energy and poverty policies.

He added that the audit was to make gender and energy issues a priority in the planning, implementation and monitoring of NEP and other energy programmes and projects.

Chikwendu said:  “A gender audit provides information about whether women and men benefit from, or are impacted differently by particular policies and programmes, and offers a basis for promoting gender equity in development initiatives.

He explained that apart from limiting the time available to them to engage in learning and enterprise, cooking by open and smoky fires also affected the health of women.

Chikwendu called for the appointment of women to the various boards of agencies and departments in the energy sector.