What fathers model at home can become tomorrow’s culture. At the Fathers4Equality Recognition Awards and Traditional Leaders Conference 2026, traditional rulers, fathers, and gender advocates confronted the inheritance of patriarchy, and the possibility of raising a different generation.
Her father had 26 children. Fifteen were girls. Eleven were boys. In a society where the arrival of a male child can sometimes be celebrated differently from that of a female child, those numbers could easily have determined the destinies of the children.
They did not.
The fifteen daughters went to school. All became graduates. The boys were not given a superior place merely because they were male. The children received equal opportunities, equal expectations, and equal love.
Years later, one of those daughters, Rabi A. Anwar, Esq., Director of Legal Services and Enforcement at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), stood before traditional rulers, fathers, gender advocates, and civil society actors in Abuja and told the story of the man who raised her.
“I stand before you today as a product of intentional, equitable fatherhood,” she said.
Her father had challenged a norm without organising a conference about it. He raised his children differently. His fifteen daughters were educated in an era and society where patriarchal expectations could easily have placed sons ahead of daughters. His decision, Anwar reflected, produced empowered and independent women contributing meaningfully to society.
Perhaps this is how revolutions sometimes begin. Not with placards. Not with legislation. Not with television cameras. But with a father looking at his daughter and deciding that her gender will not determine the size of her future.
That story captured the spirit of the Fathers4Equality Recognition Awards and Traditional Leaders Conference 2026, organised by the African Centre for Leadership, Strategy & Development (Centre LSD), with support from the Ford Foundation, at Reiz Continental Hotel, Abuja, on 17 September 2026.
The theme was “Redefining Fatherhood for Equality and Justice.”
The gathering brought together traditional rulers, government institutions, women’s rights organisations, civil society actors, fathers, male allies, members and partners of the Male Feminists Network, and Fathers4Equality nominees and awardees from across Nigeria.
But beneath the royal regalia, speeches, testimonies and awards was a question much more personal: What kind of man are our sons watching us become?
The Boy Is Watching
A boy watches his father. He notices who clears the plates after dinner. He sees whether his sister is sent to the kitchen while he remains seated. He observes whether his mother can disagree with his father without fear. He watches how his father speaks to women. He learns whether strength means domination or responsibility. Nobody calls it a lesson. But the boy is learning. Beside him, a girl is learning too.
The boy is learning what society expects a man to become. The girl is learning what society expects a woman to tolerate. That is why the home matters.
As Anwar told the conference, gender justice cannot be achieved in courtrooms or through policy alone. It must also be cultivated “at dining tables, in living rooms” and within traditional institutions. When fathers treat sons and daughters equally, they are not simply raising children; they are challenging harmful norms and helping to prevent gender-based violence.
Chief Ezenwa Nwagu pushed the argument further. He grew up as the first son among eight children and remembered being “treated like an egg.” Yet his family had a roster with clearly defined responsibilities. Looking back, he saw something many families still fail to interrogate. Sometimes the very families that want their daughters to grow into strong and independent women raise their sons to expect women to serve them.
Mothers, too, can inadvertently reinforce patriarchy by exempting boys from domestic responsibilities simply because they are boys.
Nwagu’s proposition was simple:
“We have laws, but the home remains the foundation and pillar of equality.”
Before a child encounters the police, the court, the VAPP Act, or the human rights activist, that child encounters culture at home.
And fathers are among the first teachers.
Give your daughter a voice at the table.
Allow your son to express pain.
Let your children see how you treat their mother.
Listen to them.
Do not divide domestic responsibilities according to sex.
“If your son has never swept a floor because he is a boy,” Nwagu warned, “you are already teaching him something.”
Then came the sentence that perhaps captured the entire argument: “A boy learns from his home what it means to be a man, while a girl learns from that same home what she should accept or reject in her future relationships.”
The Keynote Speaker and the Question Culture Must Answer
But the home does not exist outside culture.
Families reproduce values handed down through generations, while traditional institutions remain important custodians and interpreters of many of those values.
It was therefore significant that His Royal Majesty, the Och’Idoma, Agaba-Idu Dr. Elaigwu O.O. John, was the keynote speaker at the Fathers4Equality Recognition Awards and Traditional Leaders Conference 2026.
Delivering the keynote address on “The Role of Traditional Institutions in Transforming Harmful Gender and Cultural Norms,” the Och’Idoma confronted one of the most difficult questions at the heart of the conference:
What should society do when inherited culture conflicts with human dignity?
For the Och’Idoma, the answer begins with recognising that culture is not beyond interrogation.
Some norms protect.
Others oppress.
Traditional institutions are uniquely placed to preserve and transmit customs and traditions, he argued, but they must also interrogate practices that undermine human dignity.
“A father is more than a biological parent,” the Och’Idoma said. “In the same way, a traditional ruler is a father and a teacher within the community.”
Traditional institutions, he noted, sit at the intersection of culture, law, morality, family, religion and community governance. That gives them enormous influence. But it also imposes enormous responsibility.
The palace, therefore, can become more than a custodian of tradition. It can become a place where women and children experiencing violence find protection and support. The Och’Idoma proposed that traditional institutions designate gender and child-protection focal persons within their palaces.
His keynote also challenged assumptions about masculinity.
Apologising to a woman is not weakness.
Discipline must not become abuse.
Men and boys must become active participants in achieving gender equality.
And violence cannot become society’s preferred instrument for solving problems.
“When violence is used to solve a problem, the problem eventually returns,” he warned.
Then came perhaps the defining message of his keynote:
“A culture that honours human dignity must never be used to protect injustice.”
That statement went to the heart of the conference. Traditional rulers may be custodians of culture, but custodianship cannot mean preserving every inherited practice irrespective of its consequences. Culture must retain the capacity to evolve, preserving what strengthens human dignity while courageously abandoning what diminishes it.
What People Make, People Can Change
The experience of Becheve Kingdom in Obanliku Local Government Area of Cross River State offered perhaps one of the clearest illustrations of the Och’Idoma’s argument.
For generations, the harmful “Money Woman” practice subjected women and girls to arrangements in which some were given into marriage to settle debts and financial obligations, sometimes before they were old enough to understand marriage and, in some cases, before they were born.
Changing a practice so deeply embedded in tradition required more than condemnation from outside the community. It required leadership from within.
That leadership came significantly from HRM Uchua Amos Uyumulam Item, Paramount Ruler of Obanliku Local Government Area.
Working with other traditional leaders and community stakeholders, he provided the traditional authority and local legitimacy necessary to confront a practice inherited across generations. His willingness to engage with Centre LSD and other actors, interrogate the practice, and support its abolition demonstrated what can happen when traditional institutions choose to place human dignity above harmful tradition.
Following sustained engagement involving HRM Uchua Amos Uyumulam Item, the traditional institution, Centre LSD and other community stakeholders, the Money Woman practice was formally abolished on 17 August 2020.
But the declaration was only the beginning.
Abolition on paper did not immediately translate into freedom for every woman and girl caught in the practice. Outstanding financial claims remained.
For some affected women and girls, therefore, the practice had been abolished, but its consequences had not disappeared.
The Paramount Ruler and the traditional institution remained important to the difficult journey from declaration to implementation. Through continued dialogue involving the traditional leadership, Centre LSD, community stakeholders and other actors, efforts were sustained to resolve the outstanding claims and secure the freedom of women and girls still affected.
Six years after the formal abolition, another important milestone was reached.
On 19 August 2026, more than 57 women and girls were formally emancipated following the refund of ₦100,000 for each survivor to extinguish outstanding financial claims being used to resist their release. The achievement was therefore not simply the story of an organisation entering a community and seeking to change its culture.
It was also the story of what becomes possible when traditional leadership accepts responsibility for reforming tradition from within.
The role of HRM Uchua Amos Uyumulam Item is particularly instructive.
Traditional rulers are often described as custodians of culture. But custodianship should not mean preserving every practice simply because it was inherited. Sometimes the greater responsibility of a custodian is to recognise when culture must change, and then provide the leadership required to change it.
In that sense, the experience of Obanliku gave practical expression to the Och’Idoma’s message: “A culture that honours human dignity must never be used to protect injustice.”
The abolition of Money Woman demonstrated something else. Sustainable social change is stronger when communities are not treated merely as recipients of reform but become owners and drivers of that reform.
Centre LSD and its partners can facilitate conversations.
Civil society can advocate.
Laws can establish standards.
Donors can provide resources.
But when a Paramount Ruler such as HRM Uchua Amos Uyumulam Item lends the authority of the traditional institution to the proposition that a harmful practice handed down through generations must end, the conversation enters another realm.
Tradition begins to reform tradition.
Authority begins to challenge injustice.
And culture begins to correct itself.
The lesson from Becheve is therefore larger than one community: Culture is made by people. What people make, people can change. And sometimes those entrusted with preserving culture must also find the courage to transform it.
From a Network to a National Movement
The stories heard in Abuja were not isolated interventions.
They emerged within the larger work of the Male Feminists Network (MFN), implemented by Centre LSD with support from the Ford Foundation. Its foundational proposition is simple:
Gender equality cannot be achieved by women alone.
But that proposition carries an important warning. Women and women-led organisations have fought gender discrimination for generations. They have challenged discriminatory laws, confronted harmful practices, supported survivors of gender-based violence and demanded political, social and economic equality.
Men entering that struggle must therefore not take it over.
Their responsibility is to become accountable allies, to challenge harmful masculinities while respecting women’s leadership and understanding how power operates.
And the movement is being deliberately rooted across Nigeria.
Working with its six zonal partners – Value Rebirth Empowerment Initiative, New Initiative for Social Development, NEW Foundation, Lawyers Alert, Kozaki Foundation and CITAD – Centre LSD is building the Male Feminists Network across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
An inaugural MFN Steering Committee, bringing together partner organisations from the six geopolitical zones, has also been established to strengthen governance, strategic direction, coordination, accountability and sustainability.
That architecture matters because patriarchy does not wear the same clothes everywhere. Its expression in a traditional community in Osun may differ from its expression in Borno. The challenges confronting women in Enugu may not appear precisely as they do in Cross River.
Religion, customs, family arrangements and community power structures differ.
The response must therefore be locally rooted but nationally connected.
The ambition is clear:
Move MFN from a network to a movement.
But men must enter without becoming the new centre of a struggle created to dismantle gender inequality.
Sometimes allyship means speaking.
Sometimes it means listening.
Sometimes leadership means stepping forward.
And sometimes it means knowing when to give someone else the microphone.
“Whatever We Learn, We Must Put into Practice”
HRH Alhaji Dr. Bashir Albishir Bukar, Mai Maichinama, brought the conversation back to the reason everyone had gathered.
“When we look at the discrimination and brutality that women continue to experience, it is very pathetic,” he said.
But sympathy was not enough. “Everything we have learned here, we will take back home and put into practice. Whatever knowledge we acquire must translate into action.”
That distinction matters.
Nigeria does not lack conferences.
We do not lack communiqués.
We do not lack beautifully written declarations.
The question is what happens after the chairs are stacked, the banners removed, and participants return home.
What happens when the traditional ruler returns to his palace?
What happens when the activist returns to his organisation?
What happens when the father returns to his family?
What changes?
When Rape Is No Longer a “Family Matter”
Chief Simon Ugundo Tof provided an answer.
After participating in Centre LSD training, he realised that some of the ways his community handled violence were wrong.
Previously, when a minor was raped, the matter could sometimes be treated as a family issue.
Settle it.
Avoid embarrassment.
Protect the family name.
But who protects the child?
Through the training, Tof said he learned about the provisions of the VAPP law and understood that rape, particularly the rape of a minor, could not simply be negotiated away as a private family matter.
His behaviour changed.
He began referring such cases to the police and NAPTIP.
He said such cases subsequently decreased.
That is what transformation looks like.
Not how many people signed an attendance register.
Not how many training manuals were printed.
Not how many photographs appeared on social media.
But what somebody does differently afterwards.
A Father Who Refused to Repeat History
Prof. Chris Akani had another story.
His mother dropped out of school. That history stayed with him. He eventually made a personal commitment that his daughters should have the opportunity to pursue education as far as possible, even to PhD level.
It was not easy.
At first, he felt he was doing a lonely job.
But perhaps that is how social transformation begins.
A person decides that what happened to one generation will not happen to the next.
Rabi Anwar’s father decided his fifteen daughters would become graduates.
Akani decided his daughters should have every opportunity to pursue the highest levels of education.
Different fathers.
Different circumstances.
The same rebellion against limitation.
Traditional Leaders, Not Simply Rulers
Dr. Kole Shettima reminded the gathering why traditional institutions matter. They remain among the most respected institutions in many Nigerian communities.
What traditional leaders do, therefore, matters.
“If they encourage girls to go to school, communities will follow their example,” he argued.
His challenge to the royal fathers was straightforward:
Be role models.
Sir Anthony M. Yamusa made an equally important distinction:
“We are traditional leaders, not simply traditional rulers.”
Their influence, he explained, does not necessarily derive from formal enforcement powers. It comes from their capacity to provide leadership, shape community norms, mediate disputes and mobilise people towards positive change.
A traditional leader may not write the VAPP Act.
But he can make it unacceptable to conceal the rape of a child.
He may not operate a court.
But he can insist that girls go to school.
He may not possess police powers.
But he can refuse to bless injustice with the authority of tradition.
“There Is No Culture That Cannot Be Changed.”
Chief Berkeley Asiafa of Ozoro brought a more complicated example.
He addressed the controversy surrounding the Aluedo festival, which had been portrayed on social media as a “rape festival” after women and girls were reportedly harassed.
Asiafa disputed the characterization of the festival itself, explaining that the tradition was associated with prayers for married women seeking children.
But he also acknowledged that the kingdom had lessons to learn.
Ozoro had become a university community where many residents did not understand the local language or traditions. Important announcements had not been communicated adequately to non-indigenes.
According to Asiafa, some miscreants exploited the situation and harassed girls.
The kingdom subsequently engaged the police, assisted affected girls with medical care, replaced missing phones, established women’s councils across five communities, and engaged students on the community’s traditions. But perhaps the most important part of Asiafa’s intervention was not his explanation of the festival.
It was his admission that tradition must learn.
“There is no culture that cannot be changed when circumstances demand change.”
Too often, culture enters public debate as the end of an argument.
This is our culture.
As though those four words should terminate every question about justice.
But if culture exists to hold people together, what happens when a practice begins to hurt the very people it is supposed to protect?
Culture must possess the capacity for self-correction.
From Osun to Enugu and the Northeast
HRM Emma Babatunde Abidogun brought another example from Osun State.
He said the Arugba traditional practice had implications for the education, development and future choices of the girls involved.
Following Male Feminists Network engagement, some of the girls embraced formal education, while others began acquiring trades and skills. A communiqué was subsequently developed calling for an end to harmful aspects of the practice.
In Enugu State, Hon. Chief Arinze Ogbodo ensured that his stakeholders’ forum did not consist only of men.
He also facilitated training for more than 50 Presidents-General to strengthen their understanding of gender-based violence and their capacity to respond.
“Women must not be marginalised,” he said.
From the Northeast, Dr. Abba Abatcha argued that the next stage must include stronger case-management systems within traditional institutions.
He pointed to the El-Kanemi Dynasty Foundation’s network of about 250 traditional leaders as a platform that could strengthen community-level responses. He also reminded participants that some children abducted during the insurgency in Borno remain in captivity and urged that advocacy for their freedom remain part of the call to action.
Different regions.
Different cultures.
Different experiences.
One increasingly connected movement.
Listen to the Women.
Then came the voice of Muryan Matan—the “voice of women.”
Its representative came from what she described as a fragile community where women’s voices had historically been restricted, and women were often socialised to depend entirely on their husbands.
Her response had been to support women’s empowerment.
But she also recognised something fundamental:
Women cannot dismantle patriarchy alone.
“Men’s engagement is critical,” she said.
Her appeal was strikingly ordinary and therefore deeply human.
“We need men to show greater care and support to women, including during pregnancy.”
She asked traditional leaders to speak directly to men and use their influence to address harmful behaviours.
She also spoke about the difference access to a referral centre supported by Centre LSD had made.
There was now greater awareness, she said, that violence against daughters could not simply be ignored or allowed to go unpunished.
This is why male engagement matters.
Not because men should become the new heroes of women’s struggle.
But because men must stop being spectators to injustice.
Recognition Must Become Responsibility
The conversations about what fathers should do differently eventually gave way to another important moment: recognising men already trying to live differently.
At the 2026 Fathers4Equality Recognition Awards, Hon. Ukomah Valentine, Pastor Itah Ayang and Engr. Uti Lawrence were honoured as Fathers4Equality awardees.
Three men.
Three different stories.
But one important message:
Fatherhood can become a platform for equality.
Their recognition gave human faces to the argument that had echoed throughout the conference.
Changing society does not always begin with occupying a powerful public office or leading a national campaign. Sometimes it begins within the small universe of the family, with the opportunities a father creates, the limitations he refuses to impose, and the values his children see him practise.
That is what makes the Fathers4Equality recognition significant.
It celebrates another model of masculinity: fathers who understand that empowering a daughter does not diminish a son; that supporting the aspirations of women does not diminish a man; and that authority in the home should not be measured by fear, control or domination.
Hon. Ukomah Valentine, Pastor Itah Ayang and Engr. Uti Lawrence therefore represented more than three names called to receive awards.
They represented a proposition:
What if the way we father our children could help change the society we complain about?
The question matters because society is reproducing itself every day inside our homes.
The boy who watches his father share domestic responsibilities is learning something about women.
The girl whose father encourages her ambition is learning something about herself.
The child who watches a father resolve disagreement without violence is learning something about power.
And the son who sees his father respect his mother is receiving a lesson about masculinity that no textbook may ever teach him.
But recognition carries its own danger.
An award can become a decorative object.
A plaque goes on the wall.
The photograph goes on social media.
The applause ends.
Everybody goes home.
Nothing changes.
That cannot be the purpose of Fathers4Equality.
Recognition must become responsibility.
For Hon. Ukomah Valentine, Pastor Itah Ayang, and Engr. Uti Lawrence, therefore, recognition should represent not the end of a journey but the beginning of a larger responsibility.
To keep modelling equality.
To challenge gender-based violence.
To mentor other fathers and boys.
To speak when silence would protect injustice.
To demonstrate in their homes, workplaces, faith communities, and wider society that there is another way to be a man.
Because role modelling multiplies.
One father raises a son differently.
That son becomes a husband.
He becomes a father.
He raises another generation.
A private decision gradually becomes a family value.
A family value can become a community norm.
And a community norm, sustained across generations, can become culture.
The National Human Rights Commission’s presence at the conference also connected these community commitments to Nigeria’s broader human-rights framework.
Anwar affirmed that the Commission remained committed to partnership in advancing gender justice, human rights and inclusive governance.
Traditional rulers similarly committed themselves to promoting positive fatherhood, speaking against violence and strengthening collaboration between traditional institutions and civil society organisations in addressing gender-based violence and harmful social norms.
Now those awards—and those promises—must travel home.
The Revolution Around the Dinner Table
We often imagine revolutions as noisy things.
Crowds.
Megaphones.
Protests.
Laws.
Court judgments.
But perhaps another revolution is waiting inside the Nigerian home.
It is quieter.
It begins when a father asks his son to wash the plates.
When a daughter remains in the room when important family decisions are discussed.
When a boy is allowed to cry without being told that emotion belongs to girls.
When children see their father apologise to their mother.
When a father supports his wife’s ambition without feeling that her success diminishes him.
When a traditional ruler such as HRM Uchua Amos Uyumulam Item looks at an inherited practice and decides that tradition cannot be an excuse for injustice.
When a community refuses to settle the rape of a child as a “family matter.”
When a man sees violence and refuses to look away.
Patriarchy was not created in one day.
It will not disappear because of one conference.
But every father who changes how he raises his children weakens it.
Every traditional ruler who helps transform a harmful practice weakens it.
Every man who speaks against gender-based violence weakens it.
Every institution that creates space for women to speak weakens it.
And every boy who grows up believing that equality is normal rather than threatening brings us closer to a different society.
Equality is not a contest in which women must gain because men have lost.
It is the transformation of power so that dignity, opportunity and justice become available to everyone.
The father Nigeria needs, therefore, is not merely the man who pays school fees.
He provides care as well as cash.
He protects without controlling.
He guides without dominating.
He listens without feeling diminished.
He raises his daughter knowing there is no ceiling over her dreams.
He raises his son knowing that respect for women does not diminish his manhood.
And when culture collides with human dignity, he dares to choose dignity.
Rabi Anwar’s father may never have imagined that decades later, one of his fifteen daughters would stand before traditional rulers and tell strangers about him.
He simply raised his children.
Perhaps the question every father, including every man celebrated as a Father4Equality, must eventually answer is not how much authority he exercised in his home.
It is this: What will your children remember about the man you were?
Osasah wrote from #3B, Niger Avenue, Apo, Abuja.
