Nigeria’s Petroleum Industry Act, the sweeping legislation designed to reshape an entire industry and transform the lives of millions across oil-producing communities, does not contain a single dedicated provision for women in the energy sector.
The closest protection available sits in a 2022 subsidiary regulation, written in language so vague it carries no binding quota, no earmarked funding, and no enforceable penalty for the exclusion of women. It is the regulatory equivalent of a locked door with no key.
The result is predictable. And it is documented.
36%
of HCDT committees include any female representation
Research shows that only 36% of Host Community Development Trust committees across Nigeria’s oil-producing states include women at all, meaning almost two-thirds have none whatsoever.
In the Niger Delta, where women are among those most directly and viscerally impacted by oil operations, they remain largely absent from the rooms where decisions are made and resources are allocated. The communities shaped most profoundly by petroleum are governed by structures that systematically exclude the women who live, work, and raise children within them.
A Clear Message From the KEFFESO Forum
Last week, WIN Founder Adesuwa Imasekha took the platform at the KEFFESO Host Community Development Trust Forum in Bayelsa State, speaking directly to industry leaders, community trustees, youth representatives, and women’s groups. Her message was unambiguous.
WIN’S CORE DEMANDS
- The PIA must be reviewed. Women must be explicitly named, legally protected, and financially resourced within the Act itself. Not buried in subordinate regulations that carry no enforcement mechanism.
- HCDT governance structures must move beyond tokenism. Women cannot be mere consultees. They must be decision-makers, shaping community development plans, controlling disbursements, and holding trustees accountable.
“The strength of a community is measured by how it empowers its women and engages its youth.”
ADESUWA IMASEKHA · GROUP CEO, TAI CORP | FOUNDER, WIN
A Policy Gap That Is Not Neutral. It Is a Choice.
The absence of women from the PIA framework is not an accidental oversight. Policy language is deliberate. Every entity, every sector, every beneficiary that a law explicitly names receives a structural guarantee. Those who are unnamed are, by design, dependent on the goodwill of those who are.
In Nigeria’s oil and gas economy, where community development funds can run into billions of naira and where local content obligations determine who participates in the energy value chain, being unnamed is being excluded. A framework that does not name women is not gender-neutral. It is a choice, and it has consequences.
Community development that excludes women is not development. It is a cycle, one that reproduces the same inequalities across every generation of oil revenue that flows through Nigeria’s Delta communities.
What WIN Is Doing: Advocacy and Action
At Women Impacting Nigeria (WIN), advocacy is only one part of our commitment. We are equally focused on building the infrastructure, capacity, and policy frameworks that make women’s leadership in the energy sector structurally inevitable, not a favour granted by a sympathetic trustee.
OUR CURRENT PILLARS OF ACTION
- Building economic pathways for women to become equity holders, contractors, and business owners across the energy value chain, from upstream extraction to downstream processing and services.
- Advocating for gender-responsive local content frameworks that make women-led enterprises a structural requirement, not an optional add-on, within Nigeria’s oil and gas economy.
- Training and resourcing women in oil-producing communities to engage meaningfully with HCDT governance structures, because representation without capacity is not inclusion.
- Pushing for gender inclusion benchmarks to be embedded into the planning, disbursement, and auditing of community development funds, making accountability to women a legal obligation, not a voluntary gesture.
The Energy Sector’s Future Is Being Written Now
Nigeria is at an inflection point. The PIA is young enough to be amended. The HCDT governance structures are still being built. The local content frameworks are still being shaped. This is the moment, not a future aspiration, when the terms of women’s inclusion must be set.
“The energy sector’s future is being written now. We are determined that it will include women, as leaders, as owners, and as architects of the communities they call home.”