Stephanie Adams

Awoken to the domination of men in the society, and a saddening reflection of same in the newsroom, Stephanie Adams, a project officer at Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism, Abuja, saw the need to share key lessons from the Report Women! Female Reporters’ Leadership Programme (FRLP) with young ladies in her organisation. She organised a training tagged – Young Women in Leadership. Highlighting the successes of the step-down training, Stephanie said “the Young Women in Leadership project has created a pathway for young ladies to have confidence on their leadership roles and to exercise leadership without compromise”. She also added that the gender policy in her organisation was reviewed as a result of her intervention, and a female has been included at management level as a deputy director. Also, the organisation has grown in number with mostly young women. Stephanie hopes to push the project beyond the ambit of the FRLP; she plans to keep a close eye on all participants, to validate their intentionality through a quarterly session, and weekly update via WhatsApp.

Stephanies’ story titled “Drug Addiction among Northern Women” delves into the core gender issues around the reasons women abuse drugs in the northern part of the country. The story reveals depression, polygamy, dysfunctional homes, and emotional neglect as the major contributory factors to the abuse of drugs and eventual addiction by women, especially in the northern parts of the country. This discovery goes beyond the peripheral reason and counters the initial thought of northern women finding solace in codeine cough syrups to avoid alcohol which is against the Islamic religion.