Oyetola’s Wife Lays Foundation For Wives Of Govt Officials Operational Building In Osun

The wife of Osun state Governor, Alhaja Kafayat Oyetola on Thursday made official foundation laying ceremony of the operational building of the Osun Women Development Association (OSUNWA).

While delivering speech at the ceremony, she said: “I am very delighted to welcome you to this historic ceremony. It is the official foundation laying ceremony of the operational building of our Initiative under the umbrella of Osun Women Development Association(OSUNWA).

“OSUNWA’s mission includes providing a virile platform for the wives of government officials in Osun to work along their spouses in galvanizing human development and growth. We seek to do this through intensive advocacy and interventions that will help in improving the health and living standard of women and children in the State. It is in line with this Mission that we came up with the OSUNWA GBEBIRO INITIATIVE (OGI).

“The OSUNWA GBEBIRO INITIATIVE (OGI) is an Initiative born out of intensive consultations and discussions among the wives of officials of this State. You will recall that the Association came into the public domain with its first national conference in 2018. The Conference was followed by another highly educative conference in 2019. Apart from the conferences, we have carried out major intervention project in the Osun State University Teaching Hospital (UTH) by retrofitting the maternity clinic with modern birth delivery equipment.

“Our GBEBIRO INITIATIVE (OGI) is a further step in our mission. The Initiative aims at carrying out intervention project that is multi-sectoral and address certain critical issues that touch on the health of women, children and the adolescent. OGI will be evidence-based interventions to care for sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health. It will adopt strong nutritional approach to achieving the set goals. I must remark here that our embarking on this Initiative is to compliment the efforts of our State at meeting the SDG goals 2, 3, and 5 among others.
These goals, in snap forms, are;
Goal 2: Ending Hunger, Achieve Food Security and Improve Nutrition.
Goal 3:Ensure healthy life and promote well being for all.
Goal 5: Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls.
OGi is designed with a transformative capacity to bring about change in the nutritional needs of expectant mothers, thereby leading to safe delivery of competent children, devoid of stunting and wasting.

” The Initiative will also help facilitate usage of health facilities by our expectant mothers thereby enhancing the number of our children born through skilled birth attendants. It will further reduce the incidence of gestational anemia thereby bringing down incidence of maternal mortality and child morbidity.

“OGi will enhance the practice of exclusive breastfeeding among our expectant mothers. Our Initiative will also help in radically tackle the issues of traditional behavior that unleash extreme violence on our girls and women. One of those issues is the female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C).

“Although, this is a formal foundation laying ceremony of the operational building, we are determined to make this Initiative come onstream functionally by the middle of the year. We are actively counting on our development partners in ensuring the success of this historic interventions. We have met with some of these partners.

“Our indigenious partners include the Community Health Workers, Osun Primary Health Care Development Agency, the Osun Health Insurance Scheme, the Medical Women Association of Nigeria, the International Federation of Women Lawyers and the Nutrition Society of Nigeria among others. We are confident that this partnership will transform the standard of living of the people of our State through enhancing the health and well-being of our families.

“I thank the Honourable Speaker for always supporting causes that will help improve the living standard of our people. The women of this state appreciate you a lot. I also thank our honourable commissioners who have always been proactive in implementing policies that help the health and well-being of our women and children.

“Our utmost appreciation goes to our father and leader of this State, Excellency, Governor Gboyega Oyetola. You are truly a champion of human development. We shall always appreciate your interventions that have continued to improve the standard of living in the State. We take particular note of the support for women and children. We are grateful.

“I thank everyone present here today and I look forward to seeing you again when this project gets completed and ready for the launching of the Osunwa Gbebiro Initiative.”