The announcement of the Principal Officers of the 10th National Assembly (NASS) last Tuesday was an indication that the lawmakers are now ready for business. Sadly, there are just a few female lawmakers in both chambers of the National Assembly this term to contribute to debates on national development. From 29 females in 2015, the number fell to 18 in 2019, and now 17 in 2023. MARIA DIAMOND writes on the causes and implications of the progressive decline in female representation in the governance of the country.
Despite increasing advocacy for gender inclusion and equity in decision-making and politics in Nigeria, the number of women elected or appointed into political positions is still very low. In fact, rather than an increase, there has been a progressive decline as evidenced by the number of female lawmakers in the 10th National Assembly. The development has no doubt further portrayed the country as one where gender equity and inclusive governance are not prioritised.
The February 25, 2023, National Assembly poll results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) saw the emergence of 17 female federal lawmakers, three in the Senate and 14 in the House of Representatives.
It would be recalled that the Eighth NASS consisted of only 29 females, seven in the Senate, which has 109 seats, and 22 in the House of Representatives, which has 360 seats. The Ninth Senate still had seven females but the number of females in the 9th House of Representatives declined to only 11.
The further decline in female representation at the NASS, as the results of the 2023 general election showed, has raised fresh posers on gender equity in the political sphere, more so as the list of the female senators showed that all of them are new members of the Red Chamber. They are Ireti Heebah Kingibe of Labour Party (LP), representing the Federal Capital Territory; Banigo Ipalibo Harry of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) representing Rivers West Senatorial District, and Adebule Idiat Oluranti of the All Progressive Congress (APC) representing Lagos West Senatorial District.
At a programme organised by Womanifesto, a non-governmental organisation, held at the University of Lagos well ahead of the elections titled, “Connecting Voices for Transformation Leadership – 2023 Agenda,” participants reiterated the need to restructure the current political system to accommodate more gender participation if the country must progress and develop. While presenting her keynote address titled, “Engendering National Legislation for Voices and Participation of Women – Challenges and Opportunity for 2023,” Senator Abiodun Olujinmi, who represented Ekiti South Senatorial District in the Ninth Senate, noted that if the vision of women for more participation in politics must be realised, more women at various level of professional and non-professional bodies must embrace and support the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill (GOB), that was then before the NASS. The senator said women could not continue to discuss the recommendations made at the Beijing Conference for more women participation in politics since 1995 without taking cogent and concrete steps to actualise it.
She decried the situation where women were marginalised in the decision-making process that affects them (women) and their children more than others, noting that the current political system appears to favour and give men more opportunities for participation than women, wondering how that has translated to a better society or development of the country.
In a thesis at the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDs), which studied women’s representation and assessed their contributions to legislative activities in the Eighth and Ninth National Assembly, Eke Blessing Onyinyechi, observed that women’s participation in the NASS since the restoration of democracy in 1999 has raised questions about factors behind the poor participation of women in the politics of the country.
The thesis revealed that after 23 years and counting (1999-2022), women remain on the sideline of Nigerian politics. It, therefore, recommends that to bring the situation to an end, political parties should create a support network for prospective female aspirants by pairing them with established women politicians that would play the role of mentors, provide capacity building for them and develop them ahead of the elections. It also recommended the introduction of a quota system at all levels of government and the identification and engagement of relevant stakeholders such as INEC and political parties to ensure strict adherence to it. The thesis also noted that for women to make more contributions to legislative activities, women parliamentarians should attend legislative capacity training/ workshops programmes organised by the NILDs to enable them to gain vast legislative knowledge that would help them to make more contributions to the growth of the nation.
Speaking with The Guardian, a communication for development specialist, with emphasis on the use of strategic communication for behavioural and social change, Prof. Abigail Ogwezzy-Ndisika, identified political rigours and the patriarchal nature of Nigerian society as some of the factors hindering women’s participation in politics.
She said: “It is a murky terrain strut with violence. Given the patriarchal nature of our society, just a few among the women who make it to the political sphere via the patron-client relationship can go through the rigours. Generally, you see women who either their husbands or fathers get them onboard; this is what we refer to as a patron-client relationship. However, the public-private dichotomy is very strong in our politics, where you have a woman should be seen not heard.’ Coming to the public sphere is seen as the exclusive preserve of men, but it’s changing. However, the journey is very slow; it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint and we will continue to work at it. I believe women can close ranks. We have the voting number.”
Ogwezzy-Ndisika, however, noted that making affirmative action a provision in the Electoral Act is imperative to boosting the number of women in the political sphere.
“Women come out to vote. Once it becomes part of the electoral law that parties must give 30-35 percent of their nominations to women who are their members, it means that Nigeria is being deliberate about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Five. It also means that the national gender policy will stop being a mere statement on paper; it will come alive. So with that, during party primaries, political parties will give more women opportunities, and once they are given party tickets to vie for any position, the parties automatically would work for the women. So, we can change the narrative through that.
“Women-focused non-governmental organisations and United Nations (UN) women should also continue in their trajectory. However, I also feel that the political parties should be more deliberate to seek women who are professionals and push them to vie for positions with full support.
“You also see that some of the women who went in through patron-client relationships may not understand realities based on how they got in. These people may not be able to understand some of the rigours that go with it. So, I believe that the story is not very palatable right now, but we are not going to rest. We will continue to talk, work and exercise our franchise, but we have to be more deliberate about being gender equitable in the political sphere,” she added.
Ogwezzy-Ndisika also tasked political parties to embed gender equity in their structures, noting: “When you have party leadership that is more gender friendly, you are likely to have more women have the party tickets and once that is done, the party would automatically work for them. Parties gave most women I know the opportunity. So when you have a ‘HeForShe’ leadership in political parties, more women would be given party positions.
“But we can’t just talk about decline. If they didn’t get it through elective positions, they can get it through appointive positions. A lot of women voted for them. So, if women come out en masse to vote, they cannot tell us that we don’t have qualified women in the country. So, through appointive positions, the government will show that it is gender friendly and now begin to come out with a position on how they are going to change the narrative concerning women in elective positions.”
On the implications of the current decline in the number of female lawmakers, the University of Lagos don said: “We’ve never had it worse as we did under former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. It is a shame that we are reversing the gains made on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and now Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It’s not good for our country because the world is moving forward and we are putting our vehicles in reverse gear.
There are frameworks for working on gender and development. We used to have Women in Development, we moved to Gender and Development. Countries are moving to Gender, Law, and Development (GLAD). In many countries in Africa where these shifts have taken place, they also have independent candidates. Recall that the Ninth Senate threw out all the gender-based bills. If they are thrown out it means that GLAD is still not working in Nigeria, which is also a constraint. So, when you look at the legal and policy environment, they are very strong factors affecting women’s participation.
“Also women can’t do it on their own. We need to do a lot more advocacy and mobilisation around the male folks particularly the ‘HeForShe’ for things to change.
“As I said, it’s not a 100-meter dash; it’s going to be a marathon. We will continue to work towards achieving affirmative action and someday I am very hopeful that we are going to have gender parity.”
Also speaking on the consistent under-representation of women in the past and present National Assembly, a lawyer and civil rights activist, Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, said: “From the beginning of the electoral cycle leading up to the 2023 presidential election, we have seen how political parties contributed to marginalising female electorates and politicians. Their harassment, intimidation, and further alienation have been reported. Women politicians have cried out about ridiculously expensive candidacy tickets, little to no campaigning or publicity, neglect, exclusion from vital party meetings, collapsing structures to support male candidates and not voting for female candidates representing parties. These all point to political parties’ systemic marginalisation of women politicians. Unsurprisingly, it is one of the factors behind only less than six per cent of women contesting the 2023 elections across Nigeria. We cannot ignore how these misogynistic tactics exploit women and their resources but crush their aspirations. How can we have a future when 49 per cent of the Nigerian voting population is continually excluded? The Nigerian leadership is operating on a patriarchal oppression system that discriminates against the rights of women in politics and only pays lip service.”
Afolabi-Akiyode, who is the founding Director of Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), a non-governmental maternal and reproductive health advocacy organisation to promote women’s rights, human rights, governance, and rule of law, emphasised that to change this narrative, political parties must give way for women to ride to power, stressing that they are the major challenge.
“The Ninth NASS had great women and good models like Onyejeocha Nkiru, Abiodun Olujimi, and other women of distinction, including the current First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu. One of the women presented the highest number of bills and motions yet none of them returned. While we hope they will win their cases in court, there must be an intentional effort to promote women’s ascendency to power. Societal norms and practices are contributory to the exclusion. The five gender bills were to address some of the issues of representation, but the parliament was not responsible to women,” she added.
Renowned writer and novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in an interview with CNN in March 2023, said that Nigeria needed more women representatives in the governance system.
“I believe in democracy and I think it is an imperfect system. I think that constantly we should try and make it sort of closer to perfect and one of the ways is to make sure that we have real women representation. So, you can’t have a country that has half its population be women and then not have women be represented. Right now, for the next elections, it’s about 8.9 per cent of women candidates and that’s small. So, I want to help in any way that I can to increase the number of women candidates and it doesn’t matter what political party or part of Nigeria they are from. For me it’s important that we have women,” she noted.
On why African women are not participating in politics, as expected, she said: “There are several things, traditional reasons, cultural reasons. I think that many people are comfortable with the idea of a woman going out to work but are less comfortable with the idea of a woman making the rules that affect their lives. I think when you keep seeing a certain kind of human being do something you start to think that only that kind of human being can do it. So, I think we live in a culture across this continent where men have constantly been in positions of power so in some ways it starts to feel strange to think of a woman being in a position of power. So not only do we need to raise money to increase female representation in governance and change policy, but we also need to change the way we think, what we think is possible.”
Like Adichie, before the 2023 elections, several organisations such as Women in Successful Careers (WISCAR), Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC), Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), ElectHl ER, and others vigorously campaigned for the inclusion of women in politics and even went further to support them in several ways, but their efforts still proved abortive as the results announced by the INEC showed. This setback has, to some extent, drawn international opprobrium. An international news medium, Al Jazeera, in one of its reports after the 2023 elections, observed thus:
“Half of Nigeria’s estimated 210 million people are women. But only one woman has ever occupied any of the top four positions in Nigerian governance – a five-month stint as speaker in 2007 – since the country’s independence from Britain in 1960. Only five percent of Nigeria’s federal lawmakers are women, one of the lowest representation rates globally.”
Nevertheless, a lawyer, Godwin Eluu, told The Guardian that Section 42 of the 1999 Constitution provides equal opportunity for males and females in the governance of the country, noting that nobody should discriminate based on gender.
Eluu, however, identified the factors hindering women’s political participation in the country as culture, illiteracy, gender inequality, religion, and lack of women empowerment.
He added: “African culture and tradition does not expose women to political participation. That is our mentality. Not long ago, our immediate past president said that his wife belongs to the kitchen. On illiteracy, most Nigerian women are not educationally empowered to realise their potential in governance.”
On the reasons behind the decline in the number of female lawmakers when the country should be recording an increase, he highlighted poor remuneration, societal gender preference, inferiority complex, lack of awareness, and lack of sponsorship.
On the implications of the thinning numbers of female lawmakers, Eluu said: “Biblically speaking, the compound word of women connotes the instrumentality of ‘fruitfulness’. Historically speaking, any nation or state that is prosperous today has empowered its women more than their male counterparts politically, socially, and economically. However, the 1999 Constitution provides equal opportunity for male and female participation in governance particularly Section 42 of the 1999 Constitution. Therefore, nobody should discriminate based on gender. This decline implies that it will fundamentally affect our various homes, which are the bedrock of societal existence, especially children. The more women participate in governance, the better our homes become.”
