Keynote address delivered by Hadiza Bala Usman, Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority, at the 2018 Valedictory and Graduation ceremony of Vivian Fowler Memorial College for Girls on Friday, May 25, 2018.
I want to thank the Administration and Board of Governors of Vivian Fowler Memorial College for Girls for the honour of addressing these young ladies who are taking a giant leap towards the accomplishment of their destinies today.
When I received the invitation to deliver the keynote at today’s event, I took some time to ruminate over what I could speak about. Being a girl who can relate with virtually all the experiences that these graduates either have been or are currently going through, a myriad of topics came to my mind. But just while I was going to settle on what I considered to be an appropriate topic, I came across the noble vision of founders of this school. That helped crystalise my thoughts.
The vision of Vivian Fowler Memorial College for Girls is: “The integration and promotion of womanhood into the topmost heights in all human endeavours.” This communicated deeply with me. I felt that the vision spoke eloquently to three most important things that every young woman must bear in mind. The first is that there are indeed places for us at the highest echelon of every human endeavour, two, it is possible for every woman to become the best at whatever they choose to do and three, there is a process of preparing women and sacrifices that have to be made to assume the “high place” in their chosen areas of endeavour.
This is why I have chosen to speak briefly about “Becoming a woman of significance.” My hope is that at the end of it, we would have succeeded in understanding how this can be achieved.
The very first point to address is to define the term significance. I recognise that significance could mean a lot of things to people. Some consider significance to mean fame, others say it is wealth, to some it is influence or professional achievement, while to many others, it is a combination of all of these and more.
I do not grudge people who restrict their understanding of significance to personal achievements, for the instinct to entrench the self is the nature of man. But there is a higher and nobler state that I think every man should aspire for. This is a state where you strive with all your achievements, to seek the good of society and ensure that generations after you benefit from your accomplishments.
Significance, for me is that unusual but essential place where selflessness dislodges selfishness, where meaning is found in the happiness that we bring into the lives of others. It is my proposition that all forms of other successes and personal achievement are fleeting and will fizzle away with the passage of time. I agree with American Businesswoman Beth Brooke who said that “success is fine, but success is fleeting. Significance is lasting.”
In encouraging ourselves to seek significance and break barriers however, we cannot fail to discuss and impugn the lies that society always tells us about our gender.
I am happy that this institution has over the past six years endeavored to ingrain it into your minds that there are no limits to what you can achieve. There is no doubt that men and women are created in different ways as is evident in the physiology and psychology of the two genders, but science has also shown that these physical and mental differences exist for complimentary purposes. So rather than exclude us from being able to play any role, there are natural endowments that women bring to positions that they hold without which organisations would not make progress.
Some of the attributes that have been noticed to give the female gender the edge in work places include:
- Strong communications and networking skills that make team work possible
- Strong analytical capacity, which makes problem solving easier. The woman can decode nonverbal cues and subtle emotional like emotions of confusion, stress and frustration in employees. So the female leader can boost morale and drive better productivity.
- Strong ethics that allows for transparency, morality and fair play thereby enhancing productivity
- Compassion and intuition, which make for excellent leadership
- Patience and Tenacity: There is no question about the ability of the female gender to weather storms and walk through troubles. This is what organisations and societies need in the time and trouble and the only way to survive unavoidable low moments
- Multitasking: From birth, the average girl is able to do many things at the same time. She is endowed with the ability to cook, take care of family, motivate teams and so on. This makes her a very competent manager of peoples and situations.
These are just a few of the unique attributes of women. The truth, as I am sure you would have heard over and over again, is however that these attributes are not able to get you to the attainment of the dreams that your tutelage here have inspired.
One of the very essential thing to build on your natural endowments is the business that brought you to this college- Education. But you must have been told that this is just the beginning. You must aspire to be the most knowledgeable in whatever career you choose for yourself. This is to say that no human being who desires significance should ever stop learning. It is true that at every point in life, we all feel like we have it all figured out until we encounter situations which put a lie to these assumptions. The good thing however is that there is a lesson to learn from every experience, be it good or bad. My charge to you today is that you identify a lesson in every situation you face and include it in your armament for the walk of life. Robert E Lee, a late America General once said that “The education of a man is never completed until he dies.” I encourage you to make continuous learning a creed.
The second thing I want to recommend to you is to recognise the value of integrity. We live in a world with a confused idea of right and wrong. But we must not deceive ourselves to imagine that being virtuous goes unrewarded. Virtuous living is as a matter of fact, the hallmark of all people of significance. The writer, C.S Lewis said of integrity: “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. Integrity is therefore, in my opinion, our ability to choose to do what is good consistently, in spite of the difficulties we might face. It is the adherence to moral and ethical principles that build sound character with which you can affect society positively and build yourselves into persons of significance.
I also want to advise that you cultivate the capacity for hard work. Diligence, commitment and a painstaking attitude to seeing things through are like fragrances and they will endear you to people and draw good things. I say that women must shun that sense of entitlement that makes them feel that being a woman is enough to be considered for anything. And while on this topic, let me make it clear that I am saying that you should be hard working in a comprehensive matter. As a child, I was brought up to know everything my brothers knew. I learnt to wash, drive and change the tires of cars. All of these are of tremendous use to me today. So develop a can do spirit, show that you are skillful and with the right temperament and then wait for the opportunity to present itself.
There is also the God factor in everything that we do. It is important to have absolute trust in God even as we work at every other thing that is within our capacity as human beings. That done, we can rest assured that it is only a matter of time.
On a final note, I am confident that some if not all of you are familiar with the story of a young Pakistani lady known as Malala Yousafzai. Malala as she is known across that world will be 21 in July. At 17 in 2014, she became the youngest winner of the coveted Nobel Prize for Peace at 17! That was two years after a gunman belonging to the fundamentalist group, the Taliban, fired a gun shot that almost affected her brain and left her incapacitated for a while. The attempt to assassinate the young lady came out of the fact that her advocacy for the right of Pakistani girls to education was gaining global attention.
Twice Malala has been to Nigeria speaking to power about the need to improve access to education for all Nigerian children. She speaks today on this or any other topic, the world listens. This is an example of a woman of significance. I do not know how much money Malala has, but she has a name that signifies hope to millions of young girls all over the world. That is what I call significance. And it is possible for all of us to get there in our own chosen ways, let us just be sure about what we choose and pursue it with all our might. History has a place for you young ladies and I pray that you find the grace and courage to step into that place.
I wish you well as you take this giant step into the world and thank you for listening.
