Indeed, like the Women Commission, resource allocation in the form of budgetary provision was very meagre, barely enough to pay the Salary of staff. Intervention by the First Lady’s programmes were basically welfarist in nature, targeting Women for their immediate needs without tackling the age-long problem of lack of integration of gender awareness and competence into mainstream development planning. This arrangement brought a lot of Institution credibility gap, which negatively affected the Ministry in many ways. For instance, when the Commission was upgraded to a Ministry Status, it was not really at par with other Ministries and therefore lacking the requisite institutional identity and resource base...

Other problems were lack of adequate budget allocations and a recognized technical cadre. The net effect of this credibility gap has been that the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development is not viewed as an equal government outfit with other Ministries making its gender mainstreaming work even more difficult to pursue. In line with Government’s repositioning and reform agenda for better service delivery in the Country; the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development came up with a clearer vision and mission statement as follows.....