Nigeria’s Bold Moves on Women Empowerment Face Tough Questions as UN Report Raises Concerns

By Uzoamaka Mfoniso

 

The newly released Gender Snapshot 2025 by UN Women and UN DESA warns that the world is at a critical crossroads: decades of progress in gender equality are under threat, yet the potential for transformation remains unprecedented if urgent action is taken.

 

The report  however highlights progress, with  more girls completing school than ever before, a 40% decline in maternal mortality between 2000 and 2023, a doubling of women’s participation in climate negotiations and ninety-nine discriminatory laws have been repealed globally in just five years.

 

Sima Bahous, UN Women Executive Director said: “Where gender equality has been prioritized, it has propelled societies and economies forward,…Targeted investments in gender equality have the power to transform societies and economies. Just closing the gender digital divide could benefit 343.5 million women and girls worldwide, lift 30 million out of poverty by 2050, and generate an estimated USD 1.5 trillion boost to global GDP by 2030.”

 

Alongside progress, the report warns of setbacks: 351 million women and girls may remain trapped in extreme poverty by 2030, while 676 million live in deadly conflict zones; the highest since the 1990s.

 

UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Li Junhua bluntly captures it thus:

“Only five years remain to achieve the 2030 Agenda… The costs of failure are immense, but so are the gains from gender equality. Accelerated interventions in care, education, the green economy, labour markets and social protection could reduce the number of women and girls in extreme poverty by 110 million by 2050.”

 

 Nigeria’s Renewed Hope: Ambition Meets Reality

 

Nigeria, where women make up 49.3% of the population, with this report, sits squarely at  crossroads. Under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, women’s empowerment has become a stated priority.

 

The Renewed Hope Initiative (RHI) of First Lady Senator Oluremi Tinubu has rolled out nationwide programmes providing start-up kits, financial grants, and small business tools.

 

Also at the federal level, the Ministry of Women Affairs has scaled up interventions like the Nigeria for Women Scale-Up Project, targeting five million women, and the MOWA-SARA Skills Programme, aiming to train 500,000 women in entrepreneurship and financial inclusion.

 

Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, put the challenge into perspective and agrees it all rests on partnerships:

“We are seeking shared value partnerships — not just funding, but expertise, platforms, mentorship, and time. You, our partners in the private sector, are critical to helping us scale impact, reduce inequalities, and unlock the immense potential of Nigerian women.These realities are why our Ministry is intentional about driving policies and programmes that give women equal access to education, health, and economic empowerment.”

 

 

State-Level Impact: Change, But Still Pockets

 

From the North-Central to the South-South, state-led empowerment schemes are multiplying.

 

Kaduna State has emerged as a particularly active case. In 2024, Governor Uba Sani’s administration declared that 65,848 women benefitted from the state’s Conditional Cash Transfer Scheme under its Women Economic Empowerment Policy.  Within the same policy framework, 10,786 women accessed the Women Economic Empowerment Fund (KADSWEF), and about 5,000 rural/semi-urban women underwent training in modern rice shelling techniques to increase productivity and add value.

 

In addition, Kaduna has allocated ₦5 billion in its 2025 budget for women’s economic empowerment grants, intending to reach roughly 20,850 women under its empowerment programme. It has also distributed 100 gasoline-powered grinding machines to assist poverty alleviation and supported over 800 out-of-school adolescent girls with vocational training and startups and  trained 7,600 women in tailoring, ICT, and agro-processing, providing start-up packs.

 

Lagos State has also shown strong numbers and breadth in its interventions. Over a recent two-year period, the State Government trained 12,574 women and youths and empowered 19,207 of them with inputs, training, and productive assets in value chains like fisheries, poultry, rice, and horticulture.

 

Through the APPEALS Project, Lagos has supported and trained 17,467 farmers over five years, with about 35% of the direct beneficiaries being women.

 

Another notable Lagos intervention under the Renewed Hope Initiative-Agricultural Support Programme (RHI-ASP) saw 87 farmers, of which 27 were women, receive grants totaling ₦11.4 million plus inputs in agriculture.

 

The State has also reached over 100,000 women and youth with training and support across agricultural value chains, with access to infrastructure, inputs and capacity building.

Lagos State as also Supported over15,000 women farmers and funded 3,500 women-owned businesses.

 

In Ogun State, the Renewed Hope Initiative reached women across all 20 Local Government Areas in 2024. A total of 500 women received start-up kits ranging from sewing machines and hair-dressing equipment to grinding machines and catering tools, tailored to their chosen trades.

 

The programme, anchored in the state’s poverty alleviation framework, sought to reduce dependence on petty trading and subsistence activities by equipping beneficiaries with the means to build sustainable businesses. Local monitoring committees have since been set up to track usage and ensure the kits translate into tangible income-earning ventures for women and their families.

 

 

Ondo State extended the reach of the Renewed Hope Agenda through direct cash grants and entrepreneurial support. In 2024, 500 women were empowered with ₦50,000 grants each, alongside business support tools such as tailoring machines, catering kits, and agro-processing equipment.

 

Beyond financial relief, the state government partnered with community development associations to provide basic business management training, ensuring beneficiaries could turn the grants into seed capital for scalable ventures. Officials said the initiative has already shown early success in rural communities, where several women’s cooperatives have pooled grants to start small agro-produce processing businesses.

 

Delta State rolled out a women-focused livelihood support scheme that combined energy access with economic empowerment. Hundreds of women beneficiaries received solar power systems, food and non-food relief packs, and small enterprise tools  such as grinding machines, sewing equipment, and hair-dressing kits.

 

The provision of solar units was particularly significant in rural and riverine areas, reducing reliance on costly kerosene and petrol while enabling women to run small businesses from home. Community leaders reported that the intervention not only alleviated immediate hardship but also improved resilience among women-headed households facing rising energy and food costs.

 

Akwa Ibom has been widely cited as a model for sub-national women empowerment. Since 2023, the Entrepreneurship Accelerator Programme (EAP) spearheaded by Governor Umo Eno has trained more than 1,200 women and youths in scalable business development, financial literacy, and digital enterprise.

 

Over ₦600 million in grants has been disbursed to graduates of the programme, with beneficiaries receiving between ₦500,000 and ₦750,000 each to scale their ventures.

 

In addition, the state’s Arise Women in Agriculture Scheme has distributed modern farm equipment and inputs to more than 2,000 female farmers, enabling them to boost yields and expand into agro-processing.

 

Officials say Akwa Ibom’s dual model of training plus grants has significantly reduced dropout rates often associated with empowerment schemes that provide only one-off financial support.

 

Even maternal health gains have been recorded through Project Aisha in Lagos and Kaduna States, reducing maternal mortality by 58% across 32 health facilities, reaching more than 110,000 women.

 

 Are These Efforts Enough?

 

These State interventions show real scale, but when compared to the depth of the problems, they may still fall short in several aspects:

 

While tens of thousands are reached, Nigeria has tens of millions of women needing support. Training 100,000 is commendable, but when maternal mortality, school dropout, malnutrition remain high on Scale vs Need perspective, that number is just a fraction of what is required that needs more.

 

Through the Sustainability and Follow-through lenses, many programmes are providing training or inputs, but questions remain about follow-up. Are beneficiaries able to access markets, credit, or sustain income after the initial boost?

 

On Political Inclusion and Structural Change front , lies a dilemma that needs urgent addressing. Economic empowerment is vital but political representation remains very low.

 

Without lifting women into decision-making roles through the passage of the Reserved Seats Bill and other  legislatively backed reforms, structural changes through laws assented to bu the President, adequate budgeting and the prioritized release of appropriated funding for the implementation of the Women Affairs Ministry mandate; gender equality may be harder to lock in.

 

Equity Across Geography and Demographics Rural women, those in conflict-affected zones, girls out of school, women with disabilities remains another big elephant that often get less attention. Though Some State grants reach out-of-school adolescent girls, the coverage is patchy.

 

 

The real question remains: do these interventions match the scale of Nigeria’s crisis?

 

Point of concern remains that despite ongoing projects, the numbers remain daunting. Nigeria has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, nearly 50% of Nigerian women work in vulnerable informal jobs, and women hold just 5.6% of parliamentary seats.

 

Stakeholders argue that while the Renewed Hope Agenda is ambitious, it risks being “too scattered”; empowering hundreds or thousands at a time in a nation where tens of millions remain excluded.

 

 The Reserved Seats Debate

 

Another burning issue is political representation. With only 17 women in Nigeria’s 469-member National Assembly, women’s voices in lawmaking remain almost nearly absent.

 

Civil society groups are reviving calls for reserved seats for women, a system practiced in countries like Rwanda and Kenya. Rwanda, with 61% female MPs, is the world leader in women’s parliamentary representation.

 

With the Reserved Seats Bill,  Public hearing slated for September 22, 2025 in Abuja, analysts say Nigeria cannot meaningfully close gender gaps without addressing this structural exclusion because You cannot empower women economically while keeping them politically voiceless.Political Leaders at the National and state legislature  therefore need not play to the gallery nor jettison this governance intervention at this critical time.

 

The Road Ahead: Between Beijing+30 and Renewed Hope

 

As the world marks 30 years since the Beijing Declaration (Beijing+30) and heads into UNGA80, Nigeria’s story is a paradox: bold initiatives at both Federal and Dtate levels, yet crippling gaps in education, health, and political participation.

 

The UN Gender Snapshot 2025 urges nations to accelerate action. Nigeria’s Renewed Hope Agenda, if scaled and sustained, could be a turning point,  but only if it addresses structural inequality and political exclusion.

 

As Sima Bahous of UN Women put it:

“The Beijing+30 Action Agenda provides a clear path forward… I encourage all leaders to make commitments and investments, and to choose a world where women’s rights are delivered at scale, and the returns are shared by all.”

 

For Nigeria, the next five years will determine whether today’s scattered empowerment schemes evolve into a systemic transformation or whether millions of women and girls will remain left behind.