It is my great honour and joy to welcome you all to the 2025 WISCAR Annual Leadership and Mentoring Conference.
Welcome Message and Opening Remarks
Seventeen years of mentoring. Seventeen years of leadership development. Seventeen years of transforming potential into power.
Each year, this conference marks the culmination of our collective work to empower women through mentoring, leadership, and advocacy — and to keep lighting the path for the next generation.
This year’s theme, “Claiming Our Future: Women in Leadership and Policy Transformation,” captures the very essence of WISCAR’s mission. It is a call — not just to dream of inclusion, but to design it; not just to participate, but to shape the agenda for a better, more equitable Nigeria.
Reflection on the Year & Advocacy Progress
The year 2025 has been a defining one for WISCAR — of deepened purpose, strategic influence, and visible progress in our mission to develop women leaders and advance gender equity.
Our focus this year centered on three priorities: strengthening mentorship ecosystems, institutionalizing gender-responsive leadership, and advancing evidence-based advocacy.
Through it all, WISCAR has remained a leading voice in Nigeria’s gender inclusion agenda; convening voices across government, private sector, and civil society to accelerate women’s representation in leadership and governance.
When I look back to the early days of WISCAR, I am humbled that what began as a small community of passionate women has become a national movement that connects personal transformation with systemic change.
Guided by our enduring goal to inspire and empower generations of women to lead with purpose and impact, we continue to strengthen WISCAR’s dual legacy as both a leadership incubator and a policy influencer.
Contextual Insight
This year, 2025, holds a special significance for women everywhere.
It marks thirty years since the Beijing Platform for Action, a landmark global commitment to gender equality, and ushers us into the final five years of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
In Nigeria, we are witnessing renewed political and social momentum for gender inclusion — a moment filled with promise, yet also urgency. We now stand at a critical inflection point that demands not only our participation but our policy transformation.
Today, women occupy less than 10% of elective offices and about 35% of executive management roles. These figures remind us that while progress has been made, the path to parity remains long and steep.
We are not where we began, but we envision a future where women are not only included but are defining the agenda, shaping policy, and influencing the nation’s destiny.
Highlights of 2025 Key Achievements
Mentoring Programmes
This year, over 120 professional women were inducted into our WIN-with-WISCAR 1, 2, and 3 flagship programmes — representing a 140% growth from last year. These women engaged deeply with our leadership and career advancement curriculum — honing their voices, expanding their influence, and preparing to take their place in boardrooms and public institutions across Nigeria and beyond.
Our WISCAR Series and Meet-A-WISCAR webinars, in combination, attracted a thousand-plus participants and significant corporate engagement. Through these sessions, we aimed to equip workplaces with leadership-ready talent, building inclusive pipelines while fostering dialogue that bridges generations, sectors, and lived experiences.
Notably, the dedicated sessions with HP and ARM Pensions reflected a growing corporate commitment to translate learning into actionable strategies within their leadership structures.
The Meet-A-WISCAR Series featured inspiring voices and conversations that reminded us that leadership is not a title but a torch that must be passed forward, brightly.
WOMEN IN LAW MENTORING
In 2025, WISCAR deepened partnerships that amplified both mentorship impact and advocacy reach.
With the support of the Gates Foundation, we launched the Women in Law Mentoring Programme (WILMP) — a transformative leadership initiative for 200 mid-career women legal professionals across Lagos, Abuja, and Kano.
At its core, this programme was designed to bridge the leadership gap in Nigeria’s legal profession, to strengthen the pipeline of women who will shape law, policy, and justice.
Through the WILMP Needs Assessment Report and the accompanying Policy & Advocacy Brief, developed in partnership with FIDA Nigeria, we generated groundbreaking data that now informs sector-wide reforms and advocacy efforts.
The Needs Assessment provided the first evidence-based mapping of women’s experiences in the legal profession — their career trajectories, barriers to advancement, and the enabling policies needed for systemic change.
It has become both a research tool and an advocacy instrument, shaping conversations with policymakers, bar associations, and legal institutions across the executive, judiciary, and legislature.
Today, we proudly celebrate a milestone, the graduation of the first cohort of 100 mentees, pioneers who embody the courage, competence, and conviction required to lead Nigeria’s legal transformation.
As a co-lead of the Women in Leadership (WIL) Coalition, alongside WIMBIZ, WILAN Global, and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, WISCAR continues to champion national policy reforms including 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, 14 days of paternity leave, and 35% representation of women in boards, cabinets, and executive management. These are not symbolic targets. They are structural shifts designed to make leadership more inclusive, workplaces more equitable, and governance more reflective of the society it serves.
Strategic Collaborations
Through our private-sector collaborations, we also extended mentorship into new domains. The Canon Women Who Empower Project (Season 2) equipped women in media and publishing with creative and entrepreneurial skills.
Our collaboration with CHI Limited institutionalized mentorship within the workplace through a structured training programme that built mentor capability, strengthened organizational culture, and measured leadership impact. These initiatives reflect our belief that mentorship must live within institutions — embedded in how we learn, lead, and lift others.
WISCAR Mentoring Book Highlights
In 2025, WISCAR advanced one of its most visionary milestones: the institutionalization of the WISCAR Mentoring Book.
This book is more than a guide; it is a legacy document — a framework for embedding mentorship into the DNA of organizations and communities.
It captures seventeen years of tested wisdom, distilled from hundreds of mentors, mentees, and leaders who have walked the WISCAR journey.
Through partnerships, we advanced mentorship as a strategic tool for talent development, leadership succession, and intergenerational learning.
A book reading session held at the British Deputy High Commission sparked national awareness of structured mentoring as a pathway to leadership, career growth, and personal empowerment.
Our collaboration with CIPM — the apex human resources body representing more than 18,000 HR professionals across Nigeria — was particularly impactful. Coinciding with World HR Day, it positioned mentoring as a cornerstone of modern HR practice.
A landmark collaboration with the Lagos Business School (LBS) further amplified this vision — institutionalizing mentorship within academic and corporate leadership programmes through joint research, and broad dissemination of the WISCAR Mentoring Book.
Together, these engagements the WISCAR Mentoring Framework will potentially reach thousands of professionals and workplaces across corporate, academic, and civic spaces
Institutional Awards of Excellence
This year, WISCAR proudly strengthens its tradition of honouring excellence, integrity, and allyship in leadership.
We are honoured to announce the establishment of the Ambassador Abullahi & Amina Atta HeForShe Award for Integrity, Leadership, and Allyship — a tribute to two remarkable visionaries whose lifelong support for WISCAR embodied the power of partnership and values-driven leadership. This Award will annually recognize male allies who champion gender equity and exemplify the integrity and inclusion that define true leadership.
Alongside this, we continue the Professor Grace Alele-Williams Alumni Impact Award, now in its third edition. Established in honour of Nigeria’s first female Vice-Chancellor, it celebrates WISCAR alumnae whose excellence, courage, and service create lasting impact within their communities and professions.
Gratitude and Call to Action
As always, our work is sustained by community — by every mentor who gives their time, every mentee who steps forward in courage, and every partner who believes in our vision.
To our Patrons, Advisory Board, Mentors, Alumni, Mentees, Facilitators, Donors, and Sponsors — we say thank you.
Your faith in our mission keeps WISCAR strong.
A special appreciation goes to the 2025 Conference Planning and Fundraising Committees, ably chaired by Tokunboh George-Taylor and Bukola Smith, for their tireless dedication and creativity.
To the WISCAR Secretariat, led by our Executive Secretary, Ekemini Akpakpan, thank you for your exceptional coordination and unwavering commitment to excellence.
Closing
As we look ahead to the year 2030, the global deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, let us remember that the future will not simply happen to us; it will be shaped by us.
Let us claim our future — by mentoring with intention, advocating with courage, and leading with conviction. Let us build a Nigeria where gender equity is not an aspiration but a governing principle, where inclusion is the norm, not the exception.
Thank you.
Amina Oyagbola, FCIoD, FCIPD, FCIPM
Founder/Chairperson, WISCAR
November 29, 2025