It is with great delight that I stand here today and to welcome you to this occasion, organized by, Real Masterplan Resources, (my organization) in collaboration with the National Orientation Agency. As you very well know, December 10, every year is recognized globally as the International Human Rights Day. Furthermore, today, Tuesday, 10th December 2019, culminates the United Nation’s 16 days of activism on violence against women.

On our part we have decided to dedicate this day to promoting and protecting the rights of women and the girl child in this country. It is my firm belief that one of the greatest gifts we have as humans is our rights. You may not have shelter; you may not have clothes; you may not have food and you may not have money. But you do have rights.

Just because you don’t have money doesn’t mean you don’t have rights. We would be doing ourselves a great disservice to measure or define our rights on the basis of societal status. It is only in a dysfunctional society that more money means more rights, more political power, more rights and more influence, more rights.

The beggar on the street has rights and the guy living under the bridge in Lagos has rights. The illiterate house maid from the village has rights and so is the petty trader and the girl hawking on the street. Parents have rights and so do their children. Teachers have rights and so do their students. Our leaders have rights and so do the people they lead. If there is anything we must do about our rights, is to respect and protect them.

Human rights are rights that are inherent to all human beings irrespective of age, race, gender, religion, nationality, ethnicity and status. They include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education and many more.

So you don’t need to be rich to have human rights; you only need to be human to have them. Being human confers on you certain inalienable rights that must be respected. Therefore, no one is destitute of rights; not even a mad man. You could be in lack of everything but certainly not your human rights.

It is a sad reflection of the human society however, that every day, people’s rights are trampled upon with impunity and subjected to all kinds of oppression and maltreatment. Bringing it down to the women folks; I do not think that there is any group of people who have seen their rights more abused than women. Manifestations of these abuses are seen in the discrimination against women in virtually every field of human endeavours.

As someone rightly observed, the gender disparity between men and women in our society is very wide and needs to be breached. I agree with the observation of the writer who said “Throughout history the role played by men and women have always been directed by gender.

Men have always been portrayed as the dominant sex, seen as strong and aggressive versus the woman as weak. From a very tender age the male and female child have their roles defined for them by their parents or guardian. In many societies boys are pushed into activities thought to exhibit male traits and girls vice versa, through the toys given to them. For examples girls are given dulls to play with, boys are given trucks and toy guns and made to play wars.

From childhood therefore, men are drawn towards more physical activities and more labour oriented jobs. From childhood children are trained how to conduct themselves in order to be observed by others as either masculine or feminine. Right through existence this is emphasized by parents, teachers, peers, our culture and society.

Moving forward, we must realize that all women are humans and they have the same human rights as men do. We should therefore treat them with respect and give them the place that they truly deserve.

Once again, to all of you here today, I say welcome.