The Ogun State First Lady, Mrs. Olufunso Amosun has harped on the need for women to acquire skills relevant to their intended profession and businesses such that they could leverage on it for competitive purposes.
Mrs. Amosun who made this observation in a keynote address she delivered at the 2015 Women in Logistics and Transport Nigeria (WILAT) conference held in Lagos last week advised women to always seek out forums like the one presented by WILAT to enable them network together.
Represented by the Wife of the Secretary to Ogun State Government, Barr. Mrs. Folashade Adeoluwa also added,” Women must also behave like men who set goals, focus on the goals and go get it”, praying that more women would continue to make forays into the male dominated sectors like logistics and transport and excel there.
In her opening speech, the Chairman of the occasion and the Executive Vice Chairman of ENL Consortium, Princess Dr. Vicky Haastrup urged women to rise up, work harder, update themselves in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as well as fill up the gap especially in the logistics and transport sector of the economy.
Delivering a paper, one of the resource persons, Mrs. Sharon Ikeazor spoke extensively on pitfalls to avoid in business lacing the presentation with lots of politics.
In another paper on Financial Opportunities for Women, a resource person, Nonye Goddy-Obi of the Keystone Bank informed the participants that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has already earmarked funds for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) disclosing that women had been allocated a large chunk of the funds which she said was about 60% of the entire funds.
She stated that all was required was for women to approach their banks with bankable proposals for such loans to be extended to them.
While reacting to reservation raised by Chief Mrs. Chinwe Ezenwa who used her experience with several banks to debunk the advice of Goddy-Obi to the women, Goddy-Obi however clarified her presentation by insisting that the CBN fund remained very much accessible.
Other papers presented at the occasion were on Wellness by Dr. Chinwe Ijeoma Abama, Women and Law in Logistics and Transport by Barr. Mrs. Margaret Orakwusi as well as Women in a Competitive Environment: Role of Men, presented by Dr. James Olorunmaiye.
Earlier in her welcome address, Founder and President of WILAT, Hajia Aisha Ali-Ibrahim thanked women generally especially the notable corporate amazons for their unwavering support for WILAT over the past several years.
Ibrahim acknowledged that their support had been a very strong support for her continuing drve to expand the frontiers of WILAT into many more countries across the globe.
She informed that she had been challenged to expand the scope and barriers of WILAT and deploy it as a platform to empower women and make them achieve more while assuring of maximum cooperation by those in the support vanguard, gracing all her WILAT public outings.
Goodwill messages were received from Mrs. Lizzy Ogodimma Ovbude of PTOL-Port-Harcourt and Chief Mrs. Alaba Lawson – the Iyalode of Yoruba land.
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