By Daniel Tyokua
Prominent leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and 2023 presidential candidate of the party, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has urged the various political parties to provide fair treatment of women, to give them access to leadership positions.
He advised male politicians to go beyond sentiments and platitudes to recognize and appreciate the important roles women play in society.
He made the call recently while speaking at the “Women in Sustainability Africa Summit and Launch” in Accra, Ghana.
Adebayo, who was Guest Speaker at the event, disagreed with the notion that certain jobs are not meant for women, but reserved for men.
He noted that some of the stereotypes don’t work well, stressing that it is not enough to come out and say that women are not perfect leaders or that they can’t perform certain jobs without first giving them the opportunity to do so.
He argued that rather than being sentimental, the women’s ability to perform certain jobs believed to be exclusively for men should be subjected to analysis, adding that once proper systems are put in place, there is no system that women cannot run successfully.
He said: “Let us use data in dealing with women, not sentiment. We did an experiment in Nigeria when we started putting ministers in places like Petroleum, Finance and all those other places where the men used to steal all the money.
“We started putting women there and they performed well but after some time, we stopped loving these women because we started seeing the same problem.
“We must therefore go beyond sentiments and platitudes; we must give women access to leadership. We must put all the safeguards there as well and not say because someone is a woman, she can’t perform certain functions.
Also speaking, Adewole noted that the culture of borrowing is posing a serious challenge to African countries. “In Africa, we borrow money, borrow ideas and if we are not making progress, we need to understand that, maybe, we should reduce borrowing, and if we cannot reduce borrowing money immediately, we should reduce borrowing ideas, so that we can think originally about our issues.”
He also called for cooperation among African countries, stressing that, “the issue we have in Africa is cooperation. We need to cooperate as a society because a society that is not doing well overall has poverty, poor infrastructure and has no luxury for gender fights.
He commended the Ghanaian President, John Dramani Mahama, for hosting such an epoch event in his country.
Also present at the event were the Ghanaian Minister for Labour, Abdul-Rashid Pelpuo, and his Women and Children Affairs counterpart among other top government functionaries.
