The Minister for State Finance and Budget Planning, Clem Agba announced the Federal Government’s plan to create a basket fund to empower women during a meeting in Abuja focused on institutional support for gender equality and women empowerment. The fund will also collect donations from various sources to support these initiatives.
He explains that it is imperative to underscore the urgency of a gender equality and women empowerment joint intervention funding that will serve as a basket fund to address such issues as Gender Based Violence (GBV) that has assumed significant dimension and which is often not reported due to stigmatisation. He reiterates that for the umpteenth time at the moment, an estimated investment of about N108bn, approximately US$250m, taking into consideration of a 17 per cent inflation.
The minister disclosed that there are initiatives that must come from justices, so the funding for that would go to justices, there are things to do with health, and the funding will go to the experts in health and there are things to do with education, and there are funds that they necessarily need to give to the Ministry of Women Affairs.
He added that they are trying to put all the money in the basket because they found out that different donor groups and embassies are duplicating the support that they give, maybe in a particular area and state. So they want to have a better coordination mechanism so that they all get to see in the basket what they want to achieve, and the money is distributed across the various ministries that are involved in the women-related issues.
