Women of Arewa: Untapped power

There is a quiet contradiction at the heart of Northern Nigeria. Women make up roughly half of the population, yet when conversations turn to power, productivity, and development, they are often framed as dependents rather than drivers. This framing is not just unfair, it is fundamentally inaccurate. Across Arewa, women raise families, sustain households, keep markets functioning, and hold communities together during both stability and crisis. Their labour is constant, essential, and largely invisible.

In many northern communities, women are the first economists children ever encounter. They stretch limited household resources, trade in informal markets, process food, manage farms, and run micro-enterprises that keep families afloat. In places like Sabon Gari, Kofar Wambai, and rural markets across Katsina, Sokoto, and Gombe, women dominate food processing, grain trading, dairy production, and textiles. These activities may not appear in GDP calculations, but entire local economies depend on them. When policy discussions ignore this reality, they miss the very foundation on which daily survival rests.

This centrality of women is not new. Northern history offers powerful examples that challenge the idea that leadership and intellect are male domains. Nana Asma’u, daughter of Sheikh Uthman dan Fodio, was a scholar, poet, and educator whose work expanded female literacy across the Sokoto Caliphate. She organised women’s learning networks that reached far beyond elite circles, ensuring knowledge flowed into rural communities. Amina of Zazzau, long before colonial rule, was a political and military leader whose authority shaped territory and governance. These women were not anomalies. They were products of societies that recognised competence and contribution.

Yet somewhere along the line, visibility shrank even as responsibility grew.

Education is where this tension becomes most costly. Although progress has been made, female education in Northern Nigeria still lags behind national averages. Many girls do not complete secondary school, not because of lack of intelligence or ambition, but because poverty, insecurity, early marriage, and social expectations intervene early. The result is predictable. A girl withdrawn from school today becomes a woman tomorrow with limited economic choices and reduced bargaining power. Multiply that by millions, and the scale of lost potential becomes a regional problem, not a private one.

What is often ignored in this conversation is that education for women is not culturally alien to Arewa or incompatible with Islam. Knowledge has always been valued, and women scholars were historically respected. The challenge is not belief, but access, structure, and prioritisation. When systems fail to accommodate girls, culture is often blamed for what is, in reality, a failure of investment and governance.

Despite these constraints, Arewa women continue to push forward. Northern Nigeria has produced outstanding female professionals who operate quietly, often without applause. In hospitals across Kano, Maiduguri, and Zaria, female doctors and nurses provide frontline care in some of the most under-resourced environments in the country. In public health, northern women lead immunisation drives, nutrition programmes, and maternal health interventions that save lives daily. Many balance these demanding roles with family responsibilities, often with little institutional support.

In entrepreneurship, the story is equally compelling. Women across the North run successful agribusinesses, fashion houses, schools, and food processing ventures, frequently starting with personal savings or informal loans. In Kaduna and Bauchi, women-led cooperatives process rice, groundnuts, and dairy products at scale, employing other women and supporting entire households. In cities like Abuja and Kano, young northern women are entering tech-enabled services, remote work, and online trade, navigating digital spaces despite weak infrastructure and limited training opportunities.

Access to finance remains one of the most persistent barriers. Many women lack land ownership, collateral, or formal banking relationships, making business expansion difficult. Even when businesses are viable, growth is constrained by systems that were not designed with women in mind. Digital exclusion compounds this challenge. Limited access to devices, internet connectivity, and digital skills training locks many women out of high-growth sectors that no longer require physical proximity but do require connectivity and confidence.

Social leadership is another area where women’s influence is underestimated. In communities across the North, women are central to health, nutrition, and social welfare. They ensure children are immunised, households are fed, and vulnerable neighbours are supported. During periods of displacement or insecurity, women often become organisers and caregivers by necessity rather than appointment. These forms of leadership may not come with titles, but they carry enormous social weight.

The barriers facing Arewa women are real, but they are not immutable. Targeted scholarships for girls, practical skills training aligned with local economies, financial inclusion models tailored to women’s realities, and community-based digital programmes can rapidly change outcomes. Equally important is engagement with families, traditional institutions, and religious leaders in ways that respect context rather than dismiss it. Change in Arewa has always been most sustainable when it works with local values rather than against them.

This conversation is not about importing models wholesale or insisting on a single definition of empowerment. What works for a woman in Lagos may not work for a woman in Jigawa or Yobe. Context matters. Choice matters. Respect matters. What should no longer be debated is whether Arewa women have power. They already do. The question is whether Northern Nigeria will continue to treat that power as incidental or finally recognise it as central to its future.

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