Why women, children are my priority – Kebbi gov’s wife

Since your husband was sworn-in as governor of Kebbi State your attention has been on women and children. Why? It is a passion driven by the environment that I come from and live in. The part of Nigeria that I was born in is the most disadvantaged in terms of issues of women and children, […]

Since your husband was sworn-in as governor of Kebbi State your attention has been on women and children. Why?
It is a passion driven by the environment that I come from and live in. The part of Nigeria that I was born in is the most disadvantaged in terms of issues of women and children, especially in concerning their health and education. Nigeria has a population of over 170 million. The sub-Saharan Africa’s mortality rates are in the negative, and if you look at it, Nigeria is a major contributor especially from the Northern part of the country. It is therefore only natural that if I find myself in such advantaged position, but with a platform that I can use and also equipped with the ability to reach out to women and indirectly to the children, I do so and that is what I am doing now.

Looking at the healthcare system in Kebbi State, what would you say you have done to show your concern for women and children?
Since my husband was elected as the governor of Kebbi State, I have been working with a team of women, men and the youth to find solutions to the pressing problems of women and children in the state.
One of the major issues is maternal mortality rate, which explains how many women die at child birth per hundred thousand in the state. It is unacceptable. I have been trying to tackle this through educating the women on the importance of having an attended delivery.
Kebbi State, on record, has only three percent of births attended by a skilled attendant. I am not talking about hospitals or clinics, just a skilled person that is able to take normal delivery even at home. Only three percent of the women are able to do get this.
When we came in, we went round to enlighten women on the importance of this and we found out that there were various reasons responsible for many of these:  affordability, accessibility, lack of knowledge, cultural practices, attitudes and all sorts of socio-economic issues. We enlightened the women to conquer this. Enlightenment goes beyond talking to them; we had to engage the decision makers because in most families, women are not the decision makers. So we got the men, traditional rulers and Islamic scholars on board.
We realized, too, that for women to go to the hospital, even when it is available it can be an issue because the woman must get the permission of her husband. Even if she can afford it, the husband might say he does not want her to be attended to or delivered by a man. We can sympathize with that because even in an educated society research has shown that women prefer to be attended to by women so there is nothing surprising about that. To achieve our objective, we engaged government, relevant bodies and parastatals that are responsible for the healthcare system of the state as well as their delivery units.
 We highlighted the issues which were distribution of facilities and condition of the facilities and the problems of the hospitals that are really bad in the highly populated areas.

How has this effort improved their situation?
 Sometime ago, the plight of people living at Birnin-Yari in Jega Local Government Area was brought to my attention. The healthcare centre there was badly dilapidated; it was not just conducive as a health centre and it didn’t deserve to be called one. We went in, did the things that were required and we used it to showcase how a primary healthcare centre that takes care of people should really look like.
We got the government to renovate the facility, bring it up to standard and equip it. It is one of the primary healthcare centres launched by the wife of the President in February when she came to Kebbi State.

There have been some criticisms that the current government is launching projects it didn’t initiate?
 I think that is absolutely unfair. If may not have initiated them but because they were totally dilapidated and therefore unfit to be called primary healthcare centres or hospitals and the government decided to rehabilitate them like it did in Birnin-Yari. There was no light there but the government provided it a transformer. It made the primary healthcare centre a model. I think this administration deserves to be applauded rather than criticised.

Has safe delivery improved because of this intervention?  
There are 10,000 PHCs in Nigeria and out of these 225 are in Kebbi State. Currently only 68 are operational in the state and half of them are conducive for patients. They cannot be called effective health intervention centres. For us to improve the delivery system we must first improve the facilities. Some of them smell, are dirty and might just be a hub for breeding more infections. This is one of the reasons women don’t go to the hospitals. And that is why I am working to improve the lot of women by talking to them and distributing birth kits to them.
I partner with multinational firms that make these kits. World organizations like UNICEF also donate safe birth kits to us for distribution to the women. A Safe birth kit is a bag that contains all that a woman needs for a clean and safe delivery. It contains the list of items that are usually given to women when they go for antenatal care to go and buy. Many of them won’t go to the hospital because they can’t afford it. It serves as an incentive for them to come to the antenatal centres. When we go there we make a lot of talk so that attendance for that day is usually high. It also gives us the opportunity to talk to the women and educate them on how to go about their health.
 Immunization is another thing that I did during the last integrated measles campaign week, we were able to increase the coverage of Kebbi from 80 to 85 it is not an easy task to bring up figures.
You once said you were taking the advocacy on women and the girl child education to traditional rulers and their wives.

What do you intend to achieve?
Thank God UNICEF thought it fit to focus on girl child education in the North-West states and Kebbi happens to be one of them. They have been able to put together a High Level Women Advocacy (HLWA) team in the state and I am their matron. The idea is to increase the number of women that are in position in the state and the number of girls enrolled in schools.
The traditional rulers and their wives are very important because of their role in the society. They have a way of talking to the women on how the policies will benefit them. During the HILWA team’s visit to the state we met the governor, Emir of Gwandu, the State House of Assembly Speaker and chairmen of relevant committees.