Where are our women?

Our circumstances in our country today are circumstances that keep on putting me in a state of wondrous perplexity.

What this means or must mean to me is that I am truly wondrously perplexed anytime I think about the circumstances of our women in our land today.

In my humble reading of our newspapers day-by-day, I ponder the puzzle of power and the circumstances that compel our women to play minor or even below minor roles and parts in our politics in twenty-first-century Nigeria. Is the requirement that allows glaringly corrupt acts and practices in our politics the reason for this? What we know in regard to the misfortune of corruption we suffer is that what is known ought to be or should be true, but that is not adequate – even if we are absolutely certain that we are completely convinced of what we know. This is also a kind of puzzle, you might say, but it is a puzzle that enables us to question the process of the reasoning of our men-folks as political animals.

How many posts and positions of real worth are Nigerian women occupying in the land today? I have no absolute knowledge of the answer to the question. But what I know and which all of us are fully persuaded of is that our women occupy far less than twenty percent, mathematically speaking, of sensitive and not sensitive posts or positions in our political space from each state’s government to the central one. And if we attempt to examine the primaries of our two major political parties – and minor ones – in their readiness for next year’s presidential (and non-presidential) elections, we are given further proof of the mathematical validity of the deliberate discrimination or unfair treatment of our women.

All our androcentric false biases and assumptions which are sensitively discriminating, faulty and perverse were arrantly on display throughout the primaries. What standards did our women require to play leading and frontline roles as chairpersons or as members of screening committees? And how many of them belong to various caucus committees or how many of them attended the more than numerous caucus meetings that were held or that were denied them? It is not in any way easy to decipher precisely what standards were employed to deny our women their respective dues even as delegates in large numbers.

Do not ask me the basis of my questioning(s) here. But if you insist, I will go back to what we were affirmed at the beginning of my enterprise about the corruption oozing its charm in our political system.

Who is connected to the chief players or dramatis personae running the system in every sphere dims the light of the women who are arrantly denied their parties’ official (or unofficial) backing by the men who don’t really care about them as they should.

Clearly, the women don’t have the insanely corrupt tendencies that the men have. And their purses and handbags don’t stand any chance against the rotten deep pockets and briefcases of ritual dollars of the men. I am inclined to believe that our women in the respective political parties are morally strong and will-powered enough to withstand the passionately passionate advances of their consistent ‘admirers’ of shallow power, who merely want them handily as their sour-chop.

My basis for this view is based on the active participation of the men and the non-existent or almost non-existent engagement of the women in their political parties’ strong and serious businesses of state or of politics. The women have no visible domains. If they give in and don’t rebuff their seducers, the logic of caring for them adequately will be a non-issue. I may be exaggerating because not all our men in politics and in the respective political parties in power and authority have the power of Apollo in our respective political domains. And not all of each of our women wants to be the Cassandra of each Apollo in any political party. In fact, each Cassandra is evidently positively voiceless, but none will ever be driven insane. Our women’s time will come and they will rule and lead us. For now, I am delightfully delighted to nib this column which I hereby dedicate to them. This is my first Mirabile dictum, that is, my first amazing story to announce my faith in them. They are trustworthy – very much unlike our ruthless men, ruthless AK 47 shooters and killers. Am I still doing a riddle?

As a columnist, I am completely sure of what I know. I have stories of gold relating to our politics. But I cannot talk because it would be futile to do so in a country where we have an accountant general whose vaults of billons have been broken into. There are lots of tales of real gold. But we cannot release them until the EFCC digs further to distinguish “Fool’s Gold” from lots of precious gems. They abound everywhere in this country: Your country my country our country.

Now let me persuade my readers further by asking this: How many of our women have you seen on our popular television channels being interviewed about our political juggernauts and jugglers? How many of our women have you seen on television representing this or that political party, and presenting their respective parties’ positions and manifestoes? How many of our women, no matter how qualified and knowledgeable and articulate they are, have been spokespersons of their parties? How many of them have been appointed as the campaign managers or directors-general of presidential campaign organizations or gubernatorial campaign organizations? Much more significant, how many of our women have dared or have been encouraged or have been persuaded to stand up and vigorously supported to contest as president of our country or as governors of our respective states? Questions, questions, questions whose answers cannot but give us vagueness and confusion that underlie our politics of insanity and our age of nastiness.

What-a-man-can-do-a-woman-can-equally-do does not apply to Nigeria in the domain of politics. Of course, our women will not kill in the name of politics or of any political office. They will not be as insanely insane and as wickedly wicked and as dogmatically dogmatic as our insane and cruel male politicians. But the time will come when what will change will change – sooner than soonest.

We want Finland in Nigeria. In this tiny but morally, economically and politically appealing Nordic country in Europe, the minister of education is a thirty-two years woman Li Andersson; the minister of finance is a woman Katri Kulmuni who is also thirty-two years old; the minister of internal affairs is Maria Ohisalo, a thirty-four years old woman and – hear it loud and clear – the prime minister is another thirty-four years old woman Sanna Marin. They constitute the team of the “youngest leadership in the world.” Where are our women, young or not young or not so young, too, with their moral superiority, brilliance, intellect, knowledge and fearlessness, take or snatch the leadership of our country from our tarantulas and hyenas in power and authority everywhere? Thunder!

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.