Former Rivers State governor and presidential running mate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Rotimi Amaechi, has emphasised the importance of educating women, noting that educated women make better leaders.

Amaechi made the remarks recently at a conference in Abuja, where he stressed the need to prioritise women’s education.

He said: “On the issue of health, you certainly cannot make the female look healthier and stronger if the economy is bad. In a global economy like that of Nigeria, 40 percent of women are farmers, so we need to do more as politicians to see that women live healthier.

“No matter how much grammar we speak in our different states as governors, we need to do more for our women and another thing we need to do is to make sure that they get educated, they make better leaders when they are educated.

“If you follow what happened in Rivers State when I was a governor, we were rated second on the maternal-child mortality index and to cure that we had to establish health centres in every village.

“Each village has a medical center, we employed two doctors and nurses while we paid N10,000 per woman that went for anti-natal, so our health centres were full every Friday because they were sure of going home with N10,000.

“They are not coming there for their health but for the money and that N10,000 is economy. It’s key that we can’t separate the health of women from economic growth.”