Womens Economic Rights> THIRD MESSAGE FROM THE CONFERENCE SECRETARIAT

[jjowa@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Dear participants,
We thank Mrs. Imoukhuede for her thought provoking 
paper and participants for their contributions.  Mrs. 
Nogi Imoukhuede is a woman of many parts.  She is a 
Lawyer with a post call of experience of 19 years and 
is engaged in private legal practice in Nigeria.  She 
is the principal partner of NOGI AGBONKONKON & CO., she 
is also a member of many organisations and networks.  
She is the chairperson of RUFARM (Roots and Fruits 
Women Farmers Society of Nigeria), Project Co-ordinator 
of Women's Rights Watch Nigeria and the Legal Aid 
Clinic.  She is a Gender Consultant and a Women's 
Rights Activist.  She has delivered many papers on 
gender issues all over the world.  She is a born-again 
christian and is married to Larry Imoukhuede and has 
two daughters.
The next paper is from Mr. Godwin Ehigiamusoe who is 
the founder and initiator of LAPO the Lift Above 
Poverty Organisation.  LAPO is one of the leading micro-
credit organisations in Nigeria and I am sure that 
participants will benefit immensely from his paper.  
The title of his paper is - Micro Credit as a Tool for 
Poverty Alleviation of Nigerian Women - our experience.

I will at this point also remind participants of the 
conference objectives which we must always keep in 
focus.
CONFERENCE OBJECTIVES:
*  To sensitize our national institutions - the 
Presidency, National Assembly, State Governments, 
National and State Planning Commissions, Federal Office 
of Statistics, Local Governments, Organised Private 
Sector (OPS), Industries and Corporations, Federal and 
State Ministries, Federal and State owned corporations 
on the economic rights of Nigerian women.

*  To map out strategies for gender mainstreaming in 
the implementation of the National Poverty Eradication 
Programme (NAPEP).

*  To form a lobby group for ACTION on the 
implementation of Nigerian women's economic rights in 
all aspectsof national development policies and 
programmes.

Bearing in mind that civil participation is very 
important to national development, this conference must 
immediately begin to utilize opportunities that come 
our way.  Most conference participants are NGOs and 
from Development Agencies who have been exposed to 
numerous capacity building on development issues.  We 
should therefore pool our resources together and make 
an impact on behalf of the suffering and marginalized 
Nigerian women.

If we are all agreed that this conference should 
metamorphose into a lobby/monitoring group, we have to 
urgently submit a memorandum to the Justice Chukwudifu 
Oputa Human Rights Violation Investigation Commission 
(HRVIC).
Participants are informed that a new time-table for the 
final lap of the commission's activities begins in 
Abuja on september, 3 2001.  Special hearing is billed 
for submissions on expected institutional changes, the 
commission has to recommend to the Federal Government 
of Nigeria.  This is within our conference mandate of 
sensitizing our national institutions for CHANGE in the 
planning programmes and policies for the economic 
rights of the Nigerian women.

We are suggesting that this conference presents a 
position paper there.  The conference secretariat is 
also suggesting that the name of our group to be the 
Nigerian Women Economic Rights Monitoring Group.  Do 
participants have other suggestions?

We are already collating contributions and suggestions 
of participants and will like more inputs from you.  
Furthermore, for our records it is important that we 
have  complete addresses of all participants.  We have 
just a few now.  We need the names of your 
organisation, mailing address and full names of 
participants.  When responding you should indicate if 
you want your  organisation to be publicly listed as a 
member of the monitoring group.  We are aware that some 
of our participants represent Development Agencies who 
may not want their names publicly listed.  We however 
enjoin all our Nigerian NGOs to please submit their 
full data if they have not done so.

We trust that our silent partners will support our 
efforts.
J.J. OWA
CONFERENCE CO-ORDINATOR