* Says women’s inclusion is not charity but growth strategy
Deji Elumoye in Abuja
The Presidency on Wednesday warned that Nigeria’s ambition to build a $1 trillion economy cannot be achieved without the full economic participation of women.
This is just as the Federal Government unveiled four strategic platforms to bridge the gender gap in financial inclusion and turn women’s economic potential into enterprise, jobs and sustainable growth.
Vice-President Kashim Shettima gave the warning while declaring open the Second National Gender Inclusion Conference, #SheIsIncluded 2026, held at the Banquet Hall of the State House, Abuja, organised by the Presidential Committee on Economic Inclusion in the Office of the Vice-President, with the theme, ‘Designing for Delivery: From Financial Inclusion to Economic Transformation for the Nigerian Woman.’
The vice-president, who was represented by the Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties (Office of the Vice-President), Dr. Aliyu Modibbo, insisted that the $1 trillion economic ambition of he administration of President Bola Tinubu will remain out of reach if women continue to face structural barriers to finance, markets, skills and other opportunities.
“We have set our sights on a one-trillion-dollar economy. But what kind of economy can we build if half of our people cannot participate fully in creating it?” Shettima queried, just as he outlined measures to move women from financial exclusion to productive economic participation.
According to him, only 47 per cent of Nigerian women had formal financial accounts, compared with 58 per cent of men, describing the disparity as millions of women whose businesses lacked access to affordable capital and whose entrepreneurial potential remained largely untapped.
Shettima said evidence showed that Nigeria’s economic output could be significantly higher if women participated equally in the economy, insisting that investing in women was a growth strategy, not an act of charity.
“The question is no longer whether we can afford to invest in women; it is whether we can afford not to. Our answer is no!” he declared.
The vice-president said the Federal Government was moving from policy declarations to an “architecture of delivery” through initiatives designed to connect women and young people to skills, capital, markets and emerging economic opportunities.
Among the initiatives, he cited the National Income Activation Initiative and the Women in Energy Partnership with the World Bank, which was positioning women to participate as entrepreneurs, engineers, investors and leaders in the energy transition.
Shettima cautioned, however, against measuring progress through national averages alone, saying aggregate figures could conceal the continued exclusion of women in rural communities.
He challenged policymakers and programme implementers to identify who was being reached, who remained excluded, what interventions were working and who should be held accountable when programmes failed.
“That is the difference between announcing inclusion and governing for it,” he said, urging financial institutions, fintech companies, investors and development partners to treat gender-intentional finance as a viable market rather than concessionary charity.
“Women’s enterprises are demand; their savings are capital; their ideas are innovation,” the VP stated, even as he challenged state governments to measure success not merely by the number of women enrolled in programmes but by businesses expanded, jobs created and households whose resilience improved.
“Inclusion must be measured by changed lives, not attendance registers,” the vice-president said.
The vice-president also demanded stronger accountability, insisting that every commitment from the conference should have an owner, a measurable target and a deadline.
He said successful interventions should be tracked, reviewed and scaled through mechanisms including the proposed National Gender and Financial Inclusion Awards.
Also speaking, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Senator Ibrahim Hadejia, said the #SheIsIncluded initiative must move beyond an annual campaign and become an enduring national delivery framework for women’s economic prosperity.
He said the financial exclusion of women represented productive capacity that Nigeria could no longer afford to leave idle.
“These inequalities represent productive capacity our economy is yet to activate. Every viable woman-led enterprise that cannot obtain financing is investment lost, and every young woman with skills but no pathway to formal employment or entrepreneurial opportunity represents human capital underused.
“A nation aspiring for a one-trillion-dollar economy cannot afford to leave the productive capacity of half its population idle,” Hadeija said.
On his part, Governor of Jigawa State, Umar Namadi, represented by the state Commissioner for Women Affairs, Hon. Hadiza Abduwahab, reaffirmed the state’s strong commitment to the Federal Government’s efforts to ensure that financial inclusion for all genders translates into practical and measurable results.
The governor highlighted that the Renewed Hope Agenda “has gained strong momentum” in all facets, including financial inclusion for women.
Also speaking, Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, said the $1 trillion ambition would remain incomplete unless women, particularly those operating in the informal sector, were fully integrated into the economic transformation agenda.
She identified poor last-mile delivery, unsuitable lending models, inadequate gender-disaggregated data, insecurity and unpaid care work as major barriers to women’s economic participation.
The minister disclosed that the Nigeria for Women Programme Scale-Up had expanded its women’s affinity-group model to 4.5 million women organised into 300,000 groups nationwide.
Under the first phase, she said, more than 560,000 women were mobilised into over 26,000 groups, saving more than N4.9 billion of their own resources and accessing about N15.6 billion in livelihood grants.
Also, Minister of State for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Dr. Mariya Mahmoud Bunkure, urged stakeholders to recognise that women’s empowerment is an economic strategy, advising that: “Nothing about women should be designed without women.”
She stressed that Federal Government efforts, especially regarding social investments, are guided by development initiatives that are people-oriented and women-inclusive.
On his part, Technical Adviser to the President on Economic and Financial Inclusion, Dr. Nurudeen Abubakar Zauro, provided a clear outline of the government’s new delivery strategy, announcing four platforms aimed at transforming financial inclusion into measurable economic participation.
He identified the platforms as digital trust infrastructure, data for accountability, blended finance and the National Income Activation Initiative.
Citing EFInA data, Zauro said Nigeria’s overall financial inclusion rate stood at 74 per cent of adults, but a nine-percentage-point gender gap persisted, while the disparity in formal access stood at 11 percentage points.
He said the challenge was no longer simply getting women to open bank accounts, but ensuring that access translated into affordable credit, productive finance, enterprise growth and increased income.
“A woman may hold an account and still lack affordable credit; receive a loan and lack a market; own a business and lack the records or collateral to scale it. Access is the beginning of inclusion; it is not its destination,” he said.
Also speaking, Special Adviser to the President on Job Creation and MSMEs (Office of the Vice-President), Mr. Temitola Adekunle-Johnson, commended organisers of the event, describing it as timely.
He said with the approval of the vice-president, about 100 women who are business owners and attended the conference would be given the regular MSME Clinic grant.
Earlier in his keynote speech, former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Aishah Ndanusa Ahmad, said the key to successful women’s economic transformation is whether the financial system can organise itself around women, thereby helping them save, invest and build their businesses.
High point of the open-day session was the unveiling of the National Income Activation Initiative, delivered in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs—an initiative aimed at converting inclusion into income through skills acquisition, markets, digital tools, finance and business support.