2023: Female aspirant urges APC to heed First Lady’s appeal on 35% affirmative action

Mrs Ann Agom-Eze, a female senatorial aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ebonyi chapter has urged the party to support aspirations of female politicians in the party.

She said that plea was sequel to the appeal made by Mrs Aisha Buhari, wife of President Muhammadu Buhari on 35 per cent affirmative representation of women in elective positions in the 2023 general elections.

The aspirant made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday in Abakaliki .

The aspirant, who urged the party to heed the request of the nation’s First lady, said that if given the party’s nomination for the senate she would use it to increase women participation in elective position.

She said: “The wife of the president on her visit to the National Working Committee ( NWC) to the party’s secretariat recently urged the party to give support for more more representation in the electoral process.

“I’m here to re-echo this appeal and to ask that our party should offer more support for the actualisation of the aspirations of female politicians in 2023 election.”

Agom-Eze, who is seeking to represent the Ebonyi South senatorial district, said that her nomination would change the marginalisation of women in elective positions especially in the Ebonyi South senatorial zone.

She therefore called on the delegates to borrow from the Ebonyi North Senatorial district which had in the past elected a woman to represent the zone in the House of Representatives.

“A female aspirant has been endorsed to fly the party’s flag in Ebonyi North and in Ebonyi Central zone still in our party, another female aspirant is being considered for the National Assembly elections.

“If the zones can allow women to participate in the forthcoming party primaries for the national assembly elections why can’t we replicate same in Ebonyi South,” Agom-Eze said.

Agom-Eze, a former Permanent Secretary in the Ebonyi Ministry of Lands Survey and Housing, promised to offer qualitative and credible representation if elected.

She appealed to the delegates in the forthcoming party primary to cast their votes for her to emerge the party’s senatorial candidate in Ebonyi South.

Agom-Eze vowed to use her position as senator to fight for significant increase in women participation in politics saying that she had developed a blueprint to achieve the dream.

The aspirant assured that monies allocated for constituency projects would be judiciously utilised on the projects they were appropriated for.

She alleged that the youths, children and people living with disabilities who were being marginalised was due to low level of women representation in decision making process.

“I will be both gender sensitive and gender responsive; I will be more disposed to giving priority to social concerns ​and to the relatively disadvantaged population group ​because the women are more socialised into more nurturing values,” she added.

She called for credible, transparent and violence free election and for level playing field for all contestants in the national assembly primaries.