The Essential Woman magazine is Nigeria’s first female magazine which portrays the strengths, courage and the essence of women in the society. Inspired by the Proverbs 31 woman who is a home maker, hard working woman and engages in charity work; Essential Woman magazine was launched two days ago at the Wheat baker hotel in Ikoyi amidst a glamorous event which had top elite female personalities in attendance including the celebrated CEO of EbonyLife TV Mo Abudu and Nigeria’s foremost women right activist Mrs. Obiageli Ezekwesili who was featured in its maiden edition as the cover woman. In a brief interview with the editor Mrs. Ekua Abudu who holds several portfolios as she doubles as a trained lawyer shares how the idea was conceived and her journeys to making this purpose.
So what informed this magazine?
Well we found out that a lot of magazines centered are around lifestyle, beauty but we were thinking about women empowerment. We were inspired by the Proverbs 31 Woman. If you read it, she is a home maker, she is a hard working woman, multi-tasking, she makes clothes, she invests in properties, she looks after her family and she does a lot of charity work. The bible says who can find her?! How do you aspire to be her, how do we encourage other women to be the best they can be? So we came up with Essential Woman Magazine because of the essence of a woman, a woman of integrity. We are essentially important to everything that is happening in the community, in Nigeria and in the world at large. Essential woman is to encourage women, to help them grow personally, professionally, truthfully and our intention is to identify real role models, to find out real stories of real women. You don’t have to be a celebrity, there are so many hard working women out there, there are many women pushing frontiers of industries who no one knows about. It’s not for you to be perfect, you started a journey; what inspired you to start the journey, what were the challenges along the way, who were the people who helped you along the way. Your story can help another young lady.
Mrs Ekua Abudu speaking at the launch
How long did it take to put this together?
Hmmm…we were working on this off and on for about a year and we are happy it has finally come to pass. This is a bi-monthly magazine but we are going to have a strong online presence and a blog that people would be contributing to, even from when we announced this, so much has come in; so many contributions. People have stories; people have identified people that we don’t know about. People have told us about women group that are doing marvelously not just with big names but small women groups that are actually getting results. And as I said it’s a magazine that is feminine, we can go to the kitchen; we can go to the living room, the other room; get changed and move to the boardroom.
Talking about the “Unsung” how do you intend to feature these set of people?
Well as I said, since it started, a lot of contributions have come in. Once we have told them that we are interested in unsung people, everybody knows someone; one other person that is doing something mega, something great that we don’t know about.
To read the full interview, grab the next edition of Vanguard Allure Magazine.
