Dr. Evelyn Omawumi Urhobo is the Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Smart Development Foundation (MSDF), a Non-Governmental Organisation with headquarters in Warri.
WHY do you say there is a conspiracy of silence against Niger-Delta women?
Yes, because there is rampant poverty among women in the region but nobody seems to be talking about it. I have come face to face with the degree of poverty in which these women live. There does not seem to be any kind of evidence of anybody doing anything to help them – not at the local or state or federal level.
The turning point: But I went to the Women Empowerment Conference in New York recently to celebrate the 2014 International Women’s Day and the presentation we made on what Morgan Smart Foundation is doing at our own level in the Niger-Delta impressed everybody and they wanted to know how much effort we made to draw government’s attention to what is happening.
Well, I confessed that I have never really seen the need to do so because I felt that government should know. But the truth that came out of that workshop for me, was that there is absolute need for a connect between the grassroots and the authorities.
What is happening in the Niger-Delta against our women is morally wrong. This is the area that produces more than 85 per cent of our oil wealth, so don’t the women have a right to some kind of respite/ comfort that should come from so much wealth?
Survey: We did a kind of livelihood survey of women across seven states in the Niger-Delta, we saw poverty barefaced and we captured it. There is this 80-year-old woman who walks three miles to go and sell N200 worth of vegetables to survive. There is another woman that carries the son on her back, burning wood to make charcoal and being completely covered by the smoke with serious health implications.
There are also women paddling canoes, cutting firewood to sell, there is one who picks periwinkles in the swamp; a bowl is just N500 but she has to wake up very early to do the picking and then takes it to the market. They are losing because no matter how hard they try, it is not really enough and that is where I talked about the militancy situation.
Poverty amongst women versus militancy:
The vices among Niger-Delta youths and how completely concerned the government and everybody is because it is affecting our oil production and everything but nobody seems to be talking about the disconnect that led to that situation.
When we were growing up 60 years ago, even though we never had money or wealth, but our parents could guarantee us a degree of care to enable them inculcate the right values which we grew up with till today.
But because these mothers have been so incapacitated, they cannot even guarantee those meals anymore so they are not even in a position to give their children the kind of care, to inculcate those values in them; they cannot exercise any authority over the children because their whole dignity has been stripped off them so they watch their children become militants, criminals.
We know we have a Federal Ministry of Women Affairs which is supposed to be structures that should bring some relief. When last did they go to visit communities in the riverine areas to see the daily battle the poor women go through? How many times have the governors’ wives and even the governors, gone to the villages to connect with these women?
Women empowerment: At the subsistence level at which they are operating now, no matter how hard they work, it amounts to nothing until they are helped. We at MSDF have identified some local technologies that can make local production more efficient. Now we are doing the dry fish Chorkor oven that will help the women who are carrying out fish-drying as their occupation to make it more efficient. The traditional method of drying fi/sh is so hazardous and inefficient and at the end of the day, they may have about 30 fish compared to the Chorkor oven. We have made this representation to government (state and local) and they have not said anything.
We went to the French Embassy and they saw exactly what we were talking about and they decided to bankroll the construction of 20 of the ovens in 20 communities – 10 each in Edo and Ondo states. If we introduce these local technologies in making production more efficient among the women, it will have a multiplier effect; we have sat down to look at the value chain of this Chorkor oven, it is enormous so if everyone tries to do things that will make production go beyond the subsistence level in the various communities now, government should make it more efficient so that it will create more wealth for them and they will be taken out of poverty. It is just a question of you putting the issue of women empowerment on the front burner.
Challenge to government: Government is challenged to set up a structure that could be able to assess these women, throw in direct funding for them, throw in local technologies that they can use and you will be amazed. Can we showcase the outcome of the poverty alleviation programme? It’s not enough to say you spent N20 million; can you showcase the women, track them, bring them out as evidence?
Don’t you think the government is looking at the state governments using part of the 13 per derivation to do this?
It is not women of the Niger-Delta alone. There is massive poverty amongst women everywhere in the north. Yes, let’s all now network and draw more attention. Let the Minister and commissioners of Women Affairs and everyone stop paying lip service to this issue. Let’s go to the fundamentals, set up a network structure that will ensure that whatever programme is being put together for women at the national level, cascades down to the states, local governments, communities etc. Nobody wants to even take a boat to go there so it’s like they are shut away. But when they are going to take their oil, they get there. Why can’t they get there to assist the women?
Riverine communities
There are women there hewing wood every day for sale; some take water from Chevron’s tank farm which they hawk in the riverine communities because there is no water to drink in the Niger-Delta. And of course there are those picking periwinkles, some fishing and then there are the waterways that have been rendered completely useless due to oil spills and contaminated water so even to do fishing, you have to move further inside so women who normally would have paddled to the next point to catch fish can no longer do that because their environment has been completely polluted. I think that everybody of good conscience in this country that is benefiting from the oil should remember that that is the place where the oil is coming from and the women are living in abject poverty.
Many former militants have been trained in one vocation or the other, are they gainfully employed?
What are the structures on ground to rehabilitate these militants and put them back to work? In fact, in a community in Edo State where we are trying to put one of these Chorkor ovens, we ran into some of youths who said they have come back from training and are hanging out there and from the information I got, a lot of these militants are back and they are not employed. Government is training people to be more sophisticated to take up arms against the nation.
Is that the intention of the programme itself? In the first place if mothers were able to live up to their traditional responsibility of proper parenting of their children; these children would have been educated, trained and able to make the income-generating activities of the mothers more efficient by helping them to carry out their trades. If your mother is fishing, you help her to do the fishing as you grow up. You fall back into the family business.
