By Sola Ogundipe
NIGERIAN women need to strive to live healthy and fulfilled lives even in their relentless pursuit to suitably cater for the family and  build the nation as a whole.

The women also need to appreciate that the sooner they begin to believe in themselves and their innate potentials, the better it would be for their own fortunes and the fortunes of the family unit as a whole.

This was  the message at the opening of the 2nd Vanguard Allure Women On Wellness (WOW) seminar  held at the Expo Center of the Eko Hotel & Suites on Saturday September 12, 2009. The grand event which was a rendezvous of festive fun laced with the grace, glitz and glamour of the essence of  womanhood, was graced by an array of women whose presence accentuated the aura of true elegance and complete wellness.

Admonishing women to learn to celebrate and appreciate themselves for who they are, but at the same time adopt the habit of developing alongside their husbands, Wife of the Delta State Governor, Mrs. Roli Sheila Uduaghan, emphasised that talking about women issues was an important aspect of national development that could no longer be overlooked.

Declaring the event open, Uduaghan observed that God the Creator, intended women to be beautiful from the beginning when they (women) were given the assignment of building (the family and the nation).

“Work is part and parcel of life and it is automatic that any woman who is worth her salt should endeavour to work well and live well.”

Commenting on the theme “The Balancing Act: Attaining Work-Life-Balance” the special guest speaker, Mrs Mavis Isibor, MD, Poise Nigeria  emphasised that the basis of any woman’s work and life is significant because the average human being cannot be separated from life.

“When we talk about the balancing act, we want to look at the woman, at the family life and her life. The African woman thinks much more about her husband and children and family and much less about herself, and I can deduce that the aim of the organizers of this programme is to jog our memory that we need to look good despite all we have to do.

“When we are looking at the beauty of the woman, it does not only have to do with what we are seeing. When a woman dresses herself in gold, diamond and silver, if she does not her have the inner beauty, then she is not beautiful in the true sense because there is an innate beauty that is in every woman, which is the number one character every woman is meant to possess.”

Urging the Nigerian woman to emulate the biblical virtuous woman, she said such a woman was the epitome of the womanhood today.