I believe that we have reached a crossroads, where gender equality in many parts of the world is still not accelerating and advancing sufficiently enough for the Sustainable Development Goals to be met by 2030.  As a global health advocate, I believe to meet these goals, we must understand that : Health equality is gender equality. If a mother in rural Nigeria is not receiving the same health treatment as another in the urban areas, then there is no true progress in gender equality until these differences are diminished. 

One of the vital steps in reaching health equality will be to strengthen the national Primary Healthcare Systems across the continent. As Chair of the Primary Healthcare Revitalisation Support Group, I truly believe that every woman, every child deserves the same universal access to healthcare, and this needs to happen firstly through a fair budget allocation and implementation on our health systems, especially Primary Healthcare.  With this first step, we can ensure every woman, every child, from birth to age, has access to healthcare throughout their lives.

At the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, we have been delivering antenatal and postnatal classes to expectant mothers across Nigeria through our MamaCare programme for nearly 2 years. We have delivered our classes to over 300,000 expectant mothers now. This programme is uniquely led by midwives and delivered to mothers of all creed and socioeconomic backgrounds. The midwives give the expectant mothers continuum of care and counsel free of charge. Giving equal access to pregnant women to a highly qualified medical professional and services is a vital step in gender equality and human equity. As gender equality advocates, we must ensure the most natural thing, childbirth, does not harm,  kill and destroy the lives of millions of women, which is doing now. We must ensure that every mother has access to a midwife, no matter her position in society or what part of the country she is from.

We must ensure that increased women in leadership and participation will improve the lives of all women. This includes women who have been marginalised in society such as incarcerated women.  My Foundation will be giving antenatal and postnatal classes to incarcerated women in Nigeria in the coming months. I truly believe every woman and every child deserve rights to healthcare.

Female leadership is key. If we do not have female leaders now, our daughters will not have role models, their dreams may remain as just dreams. They need role models to emulate, they need us to pave the way for them. For this, we must ensure that we restructure and fix our societies representation of the woman. More of us need to stand for political office, and all of us should support each female political candidate from beginning to end. Our daughters need to see and believe, that yes, the woman is the mother, the daughter and colleague, but she is also the Chief Executive, the President, The Parliamentarian and The Board Member.

As a member of the African Women’s Leaders Forum, I am committed to championing its values and recent call to action. I believe that we should all remain steadfast in encouraging and mentoring young women to enter leadership, to supporting women leaders and also spreading our message of gender equality for all women.  

As I mentioned, these components, universal health rights and access, political participation, legislation, and the future of our girls, are part of the same puzzle in transforming Nigeria into a more equal society for women and girls. I truly believe that one component being missed, is an incomplete puzzle, so we must all ensure that every part of the puzzle is treated as equal, so we can build a fairer and more equal society.