Women Academics From Nigeria

"I have aimed to make my own contributions through creating a fellowship programme that offers opportunities for young African women to competently and confidently articulate feminist ideas for change in order to champion change in the male dominated spaces that shape their lives."

"I am currently a Professor in the department of Library and Information Science, University of Nigeria Nsukka.I was the University Librarian of same institution between 2014 to 2020.I have presented papers in several conferences around the globe.In addition, I have written papers in several peer-reviewed and well cited journals internationally and nationally.I am also a consultant to many organizations within and outside the country and a Chartered Librarian.My specialties are Academic Librarianship, ICTs in Librarianship, Bibliometrics, Audiovisual Librarianship and Gender Studies."

"To identify, acquire, organize, preserve, provide and disseminate resources of enduring value that will support teaching, learning and research at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka."

"By creating a positive and inclusive organizational culture and good working environment, we shall all realize a shared vision."

"Hard work is the rule of the game. As a woman you need to work twice as hard in a male dominated position. She continued, keep your eye on the ball and reach out to people for mentoring bearing in mind that people are looking up to you."

"I am grateful to God for been able to clinch the position. I hope to make a change and do something different as the first female librarian and I believe that with God by my side, I will not disappoint people."

"I have worked for many years in the field of international security, a field populated largely by male experts and often dominated by male-led military and security establishments."

"The programme exposes African women to current thinking and national, regional and international institutions involved in tackling conflict, peace and security in Africa."

"Women in research, especially biomedical research, face many obstacles and discrimination. Earlier in my career, the perception was that a woman had to choose between having a family and a career."

"I see the work that I do as a calling – the scientific discoveries that we achieve impact lives and that gives me the strength to wake up the next morning and keep going."

"As far back as 2009, my leadership in health disparities research was recognised by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the Association of Black Health-System Pharmacists with the inaugural leadership award for health disparities. I was selected by the US Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs to give the inaugural Barbara Terry-Koroma Health Disparity Legacy Lecture in 2013."

"INSIGHT into Diversity, an online and print publication in the United States, gave me the Inspiring Women in STEM Award in 2016 in recognition of my effort in training underrepresented minorities for over two decades."

"We need to promote participation of self-identified feminists in strategic political, social and economic institutions. Simultaneously, we need to strengthen our collective knowledge building and the effective dissemination of that knowledge."

"In 2017, it was rewarding to receive the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, which allowed me to work on prostate cancer risk among men with institutions in Nigeria, including the University of Ilorin, and Covenant University."

"As a scholar, mentor and activist I am constantly inspired by seeing the incredible talent that exists in the next generation of African feminist leaders and witnessing unfolding opportunities for them to unleash that talent and potential."

"The black population is disproportionately affected by cancer globally. I worked with several experts and institutions"

"In Nigeria, while I was at the University of Ife, one of the things that I (and so many women) had to deal with was the sexual predators."

"The Global Oncology Clinical Trials Congress for blacks is very dear to my heart given the underrepresentation of the black population in clinical trials."

"In the United States, what I have experienced as a woman is gender discrimination. It is coincidental that the earliest recollection of gender discrimination that I experienced was made by a female professor when I was in graduate school. The female professor told me that I would not be able to finish my graduate programme because I got married and was pregnant in my first year of graduate school"

"My ammunition for overcoming this discrimination is hard work and undeniable productivity and output."

"In our contemporary society, we say behind a very successful man there is a woman, but I don’t think it is right to place your wife or woman behind you."

"I believe I have something to offer to ANA. I have a great contribution to make to ANA. It doesn’t matter how many times I will be contesting; the most important thing is that there is something I want to give to ANA, and that I really want to achieve."

"Establishing a school is a wonderful initiative as it offers the inmates opportunities of living a better life when released into society"

"What your administration is doing at the center is wonderful because society is dependent on it. She said if the people coming into the center-left exactly how they were when they came to the center, society would suffer the consequences"

"I don’t think my orientation has changed. I am still a contemporary writer. Sometimes, I veer into feminism –the concern of women and children, not really feminism, because I have a brand of feminism I call Beside Feminism."

"We need people to know what we are doing, so that we continue to get their support. We welcome ideas on how to even do it better than what we are doing. We are very lucky to have a leader that is young, dynamic, committed, and focused-it has really helped our government. The people of Lagos, they are very happy. As I said, they have not made a mistake in choosing him as a governor to lead-they have not made a mistake in choosing all of us to work with him, as well."

"Sure. You mean, when we were going around to say "vote us in, you will not be disappointed?" Yes. You know, even before you come in, like a democratic government there are things you want to tell your people that we're going to do or we're going to improve on, and these are the areas-. We continue to have free education and we even provide the quality, not just education. We make roads for you. We provide water for you. You will access free healthcare and you now see all these things that we said. We said it and we are doing it. After four years-within two years, you've seen all these things manifested."

"AORTIC is the premier organisation for cancer research and training in Africa. As the chair of the AORTIC research committee, I work with outstanding cancer scientists within and outside Africa to provide scientific leadership and direction for cancer research in Africa."

"Thank you very much and I hope it will be useful for your studies."

"Womanism takes in a lot of things, like pride for women. Womanism may say: let the woman be superior to the man to some extent; it is a kind of struggle for supremacy. But Beside Feminism is not a struggle for supremacy; it is not a fight for power; it is not a struggle."

"Like I said, even the government has a ten-point agenda-infrastructure, education, water provision, and so on. It wasn't that difficult because for allocation of funds, to budget for it, you have to see, look at what comes in, what we can generate generally. You have to look into that and see how you want to allocate. You know these are social services. Healthcare is also there. People need-in that part of the world we also have to improve, provide a lot of healthcare for our people. So, that is one area that takes a large chunk of money as well, and education as well, is also a social service and needs a large chunk."

"No, not of the total budget. I mean, what is allocated to education in previous years, we have to add more to this. There was an increase, a large increase, to what is allocated to education. That has helped us in doing most of these things. But nevertheless, funding is still a challenge to us. Even with the increase, it is still very difficult for us to provide all those things we wanted. As a result of that we said, "we can't just fold our arms and say by the time we utilize what we have-." Let's find other ways of getting funding, because it is the greatest challenge. If you want quality things-you want the best things-it costs money."

"Not that it wasn't possible-not that people never knew that education is the necessary thing-but before, people they tended to believe that to get to the people in charge then, that it was not easy. Unlike now, that they can access people like me. They can access officers that are in charge, so that's a big difference. The openness of how we do things now has been a great change from what used to happen before. Even at the offices, there has been a sort of restructuring. That means that departments that are in charge as well, you reassess people."

"I will continue like my father did it till he breathed his last. Politics is not something you can quit once you get involved. I will continue to be of service to my people because I come from the riverine rural area that is always marginalised. It is only through political participation that their plight can be addressed and their voice heard."

"Well we came in, like I said, there were a lot of challenges, especially having to do with infrastructure of the schools. We knew what we wanted immediately. We felt to do this the funding in previous years was increased. In previous years a ratio about 50%."

"You see people, you tell them "I'm doing this." They want to see it. That way we have been able to prove in this state, that "we want to do this." This is our budget. This is what we spend the budget on. So, you go around and you see the manifestation. You want to see a lot of roads that have been completed. You want to see a lot of changes that are taking place. You see schools that are being rebuilt, that are being rehabilitated. You see the books, you see the physical things."

"So feminism means work to maintain a good family; live for your family; live for your husband; let your ideas match that of your husband; move beside your husband and be one in decision and in unison. Any other thing is not feminism."

"The retinue of aides was for protocol sake and it is for a certain period of time. I still have my aides but on more humble and quiet side. It is natural for everybody to enjoy the glamour of office. Outside it, you still attract that respect; you still get honour from a lot of people. Remember that life and power are transient and the only thing that is stable and constant is change."

"He really supported me. He even took it more seriously than I did. He served in the Navy and knowing the family I come from it wasn’t a big deal for him when I was called upon to serve. When the time came there was no way I could run away from it."

"My husband supported me which made life easy for me while in office. My children were also grown up: My last child was already in the secondary school while the first two were in the university. We had a family meeting to agree on how we are going to balance it. I was in touch with my family all through. I was able to keep my home and was stable in the office as well."

"I have a small consultancy firm where I deal with educational issues. Once in a while, I go on speaking engagements. I attend a lot of seminars in and outside the country. I attend development programmes as well because as you age you still have to constantly renew yourself. I still do a lot of reading and writing."

"I enjoy inner peace. When you are in Christ, everything is possible. I take each day as it comes. I am conscious of what I eat."

"I am from Badagry in Ojo Division of Lagos State, which gave me the opportunity to serve my people as a politician.I studied English Education. I am a teacher by profession. Ironically, going into education was accidental. I never intended to be a teacher. I went to collect a form for a cousin of mine, and from there, my passion was fired and I just said why not try it out. I found out it was my calling especially when it comes to improving the lives of young people."

"It was not convenient especially when I had to work late into the night. Oftentimes, he came to my official residence and I visited my home regularly. My husband didn’t live with me in the government house because it wasn’t convenient for him."

"Everybody just wants to know, what’s your story, how did you get to NASA? How did a 26-year-old black girl get a Ph.D. in something like aerospace engineering and get to work at NASA?"

"The reason I started to share, the reason I created my professional Instagram and Twitter pages, is because I’ve heard a million and one times, that my story’s not just for me. People have told me multiple times – Wendy, it’s not about you, it’s bigger than you."

"I can’t even imagine how I would have struggled during the first year transitioning to being an aerospace engineering freshman at UT Arlington, but again arduous is relative."

"Now, generally, you do have the expectations you set for yourself. To what extent does imposter syndrome manifests with you and it varies for different people. How I handle it is I try to be super, overly diligent with everything, I have to know everything. I have to start from scratch; I have to understand it. And it’s very imperative; it’s important for me that my achievements are attributed to my capabilities and not simply because I am a Woman of Color in this field. It has to be my technical expertise that has brought me here or taken me there."

"I was that person that would ask companies – hey, can your company help with this or that?"

"I didn’t have negative experiences. But again, you stand out, and it’s just how you stand out that matters. But you will stand out regardless when you’re in the minority: when you’re female, when you’re black, or when you’re young."