Business
Don Lists Barriers To Women Empowerment
An economist at the University of Benin, Prof. Christiana Okojie , has said that low paid jobs and unpaid work done by women are challenges to women’s economic empowerment.
Okojie told Our Correspondent in last Thursday that most of the work done by women were not regarded as work but as “role playing’’.
Okojie said that this notion deprives women the time to make use of their resources and skills for economic gain and benefit to the nation.
“The biggest problem against women empowerment is that most of the works that they do are not recognised at home, they are not treated as work.
“All the unpaid work that women are doing in the household, farms, markets, working as junior partners with their husbands, the society does not see them as work; it sees them as performing women’s roles.
“If anything has to change in the society, women must be seen as contributors to the country’s Gross Domestic Product,” Okojie said.
She said women economic empowerment was the most important factor for gender equality and urged women to rise up to take the task of empowerment in their hands.
Okojie also said that women could be empowered by having control over income, access to and control of family resources, access to employment, ownership of land, representation in high-paying jobs, among others.
She said it was important for women to be continually educated; considering that education was an important determinant of access to wage employment and income.
Okojie said empowerment for women would enable them to contribute to their families, societies and national economies.
“It makes good business sense when women have the skills and opportunities to utilise them, they can contribute to growth of business and markets.
“Since women make up the majority of the world’s poor, women’s economic empowerment is essential if poverty reduction goals are to be achieved,” she said
Okojie said that there was a need for stakeholders to increase women’s access to property rights by adopting gender perspectives in all issues as a way of promoting women empowerment.
Okojie said the UN was at the forefront for global commitment on women and urged the Federal Government to domesticate the relevant conventions that it had signed.
The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has said that Bank Verification Number (BVN) enrolments rose by 6.8 per cent year-on-year to 67.8 million as at December 2025, up from 63.5 million recorded in the corresponding period of 2024.
In a statement published on its website, NIBSS attributed the growth to stronger policy enforcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the expansion of diaspora enrolment initiatives.
NIBSS noted that the expansion reinforces the BVN system’s central role in Nigeria’s financial inclusion drive and digital identity framework.
Another major driver, the statement said, was the rollout of the Non-Resident Bank Verification Number (NRBVN) initiative, which allows Nigerians in the diaspora to obtain a BVN remotely without physical presence in the country.
A five-year analysis by NIBSS showed consistent growth in BVN enrolments, rising from 51.9 million in 2021 to 56.0 million in 2022, 60.1 million in 2023, 63.5 million in 2024 and 67.8 million by December 2025. The steady increase reflects stronger compliance with biometric identity requirements and improved coverage of the national banking identity system.
However, NIBSS noted that BVN enrolments still lag the total number of active bank accounts, which exceeded 320 million as of March 2025.
The gap, it explained, is largely due to multiple bank accounts linked to single BVNs, as well as customers yet to complete enrolment, despite the progress recorded.