Appoint more women into public positions, centre urges Buhari

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has been urged to ensure that more women are appointed into his cabinet to compensate for the low number of female who won elective positions in the last general elections.

This call was made at a thematic dialogue on “Mentoring young women and the future of women’s political participation” organised by the Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) held recently in Lagos.

According to the Executive Director, WARDC, Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, “we realized that in our work with women’s political participation, very few women have been part of governance and looking at the statistics we have in Nigeria, young people are about 60 percent of the entire population. That should be the population driving the society. Unfortunately, we don’t have them in positions of power and very little recognition of them in the constitution and our laws as people who can be active participants in governance. 

“The Buhari regime came up with some promises for women before it won the elections, which include ensuring their socio-economic rights as well as more women getting appointive positions. We hope that they will be able to achieve some of these because we feel they made all the promises to get our votes and having gotten this, we should hold them accountable.

“It is unfortunate that out of the 10 positions announced so far, only one woman was appointed, which is in acting capacity as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman. We are not happy that up till now there are no women. If talk about change, then there should be gender equality.”

A member of Amuwo Odofin constituency, Hon. Kate Bamijoko, while mentoring the young women in their political career noted that there is a need for them to identify what they want, where they want to get to and also seek strategies on how to get there by reading and getting involved in political activities.
 
“One issue women have is that they do not support each other, unlike the men. Women must be able to carry each other along and support themselves. Women must also look beyond the challenges surrounding them, carve a niche and make themselves outstanding.”

While noting that funding has been a major challenge for women, she added that there is need for NGOs, individuals and corporate organisations who are willing to sponsor women who want to go into politics not because of what they want to get back from them, but because they see the potential in them to do well.