Osinbajo advocates better life for widows, empowers 300

The Wife of the Vice-President, Dolapo Osinbajo, has empowered 300 widows.

Speaking at the widows’ trust fund of the International Women Society (IWS) 20th anniversary, in Lagos, Mrs Osinbajo commended the society for holding on to the age-old values which the society represents, adding that one of the values is the unity of purpose.

Mrs Osinbajo, who asked for help on behalf of the Nigerian widows, called on influential Nigerians to rise to the plight of the widows, who according to her have unfortunate to lose those who could have helped them to make live easier.

According to her: “I will look into skills acquisition and I promise to empower 300 of them under what we called Project Ayodele as my mother’s name is Ayodele. The skill training was set up in 2011 to honour the memory of our late mother. I believe that If we each do a little, together we can do a lot.”

Commending IWS for sustaining the good work, she added that it was almost impossible to find people that could hold on to a task for a year let alone 20 years and 60 years, pointing out that for IWS to have sustained the initiative for more than 20 years speak showed that faithfulness and dedication could be found in the society.

She added: “The age-old values that they have shown clearly today is the ability to clearly articulate and present an idea so that nobody is in doubt as to what their intentions are and I salute their transparency.”

Speaking at the occasion, the Chairperson of the trust fund, Mrs Ibiwunmi Akinnola, said that the trust fund has directly and indirectly impacted over 80,000 women over the past years, even as she called on individuals, government, corporate organisations to support them as they restore hope for widows in the society.

She added: “We may not have experienced widowhood directly, but we have seen our mothers, sisters, friends and other family members go through painful experience, and we understand the level of support they require. Our intention is to empower women to enable them get their lives back on track.