The Deputy Chief Whip, House of Representatives, Chief Mrs. Nkeiruka Onyejeocha has commended the Association of Professional Women in Engineering of Nigeria, APWEN for their advocacy in encouraging the girl child through scholarships in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics STEM, career.
She said women has the ability and capability to hold leadership positions whether elective or professional like their male counterpart.
Speaking at the 2020 International Women Engineering Day celebration APWEN with the Theme: ‘The Role of Women in Shaping the World’, the lawmaker emphasized that the girl child must be encouraged to take to STEM careers, allow themselves not to be intimidated to strive for excellence in contributing their quota to shaping the world.
“Let me start by commending you women engineers because you have started because even before we started thinking have seen you going to schools to give scholarships to our girls to study engineering off course for me that is a good start.”
She said there is no enabling environment because of customs and tradition and this should not be allowed to limit their goal in life.
“But we cannot sit down and be talking about the challenges, we should take the bull by its horns like what APWEN is doing to get the female children out of the streets, teach them how to be responsible and making sure that we take care of their education by going the extra mile. For a woman to succeed you need to work ten times more than your male counterpart.”
“We should be firm, we should be focused to take it, we are to train our girls to know that this world is for all of is and that the country belong to all of us, nobody should intimidate us.”
Onyejeocha stated that the onus is on the Association to increase the number of women in the engineering profession through advocacy to encourage girls especially in the secondary schools to study engineering at the university level.
“When we were growing up this profession was for males so if you check the numbers of engineers that we have off course like in the 40’s ago, the numbers you have now is not the same, so that is a good start.”
