Every March 8, Nigerian women join the rest of the world to celebrate the International Women’s Day. In Nigeria, it is also a day for the retinue of promises by political office holders to regale women of their promises to uplift them and lift them out of poverty. From the least to the highest office holder, we are assured of inclusion, participation, and gender-balanced policies. But by the next day, the same office holders return to their default setting and pretend they never said anything till the next IWD, and the cycle remains endless.
Gender specialist and First Lady of Ekiti State, Erelu Bisi Fayemi, was in 2021 quoted as saying, “Millions of women and girls still suffer from the feminisation of poverty, lack of access to basic resources, violent conflict, and the use of culture, religion, and tradition to render women voiceless. Crimes against women and children are on the rise. Gender-based violence, trafficking, displacement, kidnappings and so on make private and public spaces in our country very unsafe for women and girls. Nigeria also continues to record unacceptably high levels of maternal and infant mortality rates, one of the highest in the world”. Truth be told, nothing has changed!
Just on March 1, the National Assembly committed one of the greatest crimes against humanity. Comprised of about 96 per cent males, they voted against female inclusion in political spaces, simply put.
Our supposed distinguished and honourable lawmakers voted against 35 per cent appointive positions for women, denied women 35 per cent affirmative action in party administration and leadership, and rejected specific seats for women in the NASS.
Further, our lawmakers declined citizenship to the foreign-born husband of a Nigerian woman, denied a foreign-born wife automatic citizenship, and denied Nigerians in the Diaspora right to vote. Simply put, the action of those who voted against the gender bills is nothing short of selfishness, bigotry, ignorance, and self-centredness, no matter how we try to sound politically correct!
To register our displeasure, women now occupy the National Assembly and state Houses of Assembly. Even as the lawmakers have threatened no reconsideration of the gender bills.
The Senate President, Alhaji Ahmad Lawan, had during his felicitation message to women during the 2021 International Women’s Day acknowledged the pivotal roles women play in the family and the nation.
“Women play indispensable roles in private and public lives and deserve full support and respect of society for those roles. Our women also deserve support and encouragement to participate without discrimination or inhibitions in governance and public affairs in general. Our public policies should, therefore, deliberately seek to get the best from them for the peace and progress of our country,” Lawan said.
Unfortunately, exactly one year after, the reverse is the stark reality; it is a crime to be a Nigerian woman, according to the lawmakers who voted against gender bills.
World over, the International Women’s Day is a day set aside to recognise women’s achievements despite divisions and persisting boundaries. It is a day to acknowledge and honour women around the world for the numerous contributions we make each day to society. It has helped strengthen support for women’s rights movements and participation in politics and the economy. This day has been especially significant for women in developing countries whose rights are severely limited like Nigeria.
The International Women’s Day is one of the most important days of the year to celebrate women’s achievements, raise awareness about women’s equality, lobby for accelerated gender parity, and fundraise for female-focused charities.
This year’s campaign theme is “#BreakTheBias”, which has been a recurring concern Nigerian women and girls grapple with. Bias, and the need to break it and provide a level-playing ground.
Nigerian women and girls first must be commended for their commitment and resilience to remain strong and unbroken despite the rising challenges confronting us daily.
These concerns range from child marriage, female genital mutilation, girl-child labour, domestic violence, gender-based violence, bodily rights, polygamy, restricted access to political participation, religious restrictions, underpaid wages, lack of access to quality healthcare, tradition and cultural biases, kidnapping, ritual killings, insecurity, insurgency, internal displacement, COVID-19. The list is endless.
In Nigeria, women and girls lack access to freedom of thought, religion, opinion, and expression, as well as restricted access to education, the right to marry and have family, bodily integrity, and privacy amongst others.
However, Nigerian women have dared and survived the drill and remained mentally stable despite the myriad of challenges. We have surmounted almost every concern and shaken them off, even to the surprise of many. Or how else does one explain the dilapidated education and healthcare systems, insecurity, insurgency, tumultuous inflation buying rates, obnoxious cultures, traditions, and practices, especially in the face of gender-based violence?
Women and girls despite our numbers enjoy less than six per cent representation. Out of the 109 members, only seven women are in the Senate while 11 women are in the House of Representatives. All together, 18 out of the 469 members of the National Assembly. This is a very paltry and discriminative figure.
Rwanda, one of Africa’s best-growing economies, enjoys the highest female representation world over. As part of her recovery from its post-genocide era, a new constitution was written and ratified in 2003 which gives an opportunity to include progressive measures, such as a gender quota mandating that women hold no less than 30 per cent of political seats. The result is the country has one of the best systems currently due to the inclusion of women!
Regrettably, Nigeria has the lowest number of female parliamentarians in sub-Saharan Africa and ranks 133rd in the world for female political representation. Women own only 20 per cent of enterprises in the formal sector and only 11.7 per cent of Board Directors in the country are women.
Painfully in Nigeria, when women advocate inclusion, some people consider it as a violation of their religious beliefs, and or subversion of their culture, yet the number of people developing health concerns including men is on the increase, no thanks to the wrong beliefs, approach, and overworked bodies.
For clarity’s sake, the inclusion of women does not amount to the fall of men! Oh no, rather it fosters discussions from different perspectives. For instance, in the provision of needs for internally displaced persons at the different camps, the authorities have failed to see the provision of sanitary towels for non-pregnant women and girls as a must as against condoms whose use is clearly a choice!
Ahead of the 2023 general election, the Nigerian Feminist Forum is concerned about the lack of representation of women and girls in every facet of the country, although we form almost half of the population, we are not heard!
Soon, Nigeria will commence the electoral process to elect people to occupy political offices from 2023 but the issue is, to do what exactly? Is it to reenact the same unworkable system?
Of 144 countries, Nigeria ranks 122nd in closing the gender gap, and last in maternal mortality, infant vaccination, and neonatal mortality, according to the Africa Sustainability Index launched by the Future Proofing Healthcare initiative at the 2021 Africa Health Agenda International Conference.
According to the UN Refugee Agency, over 3.2 million people are displaced, including over 2.9 IDPs in north-eastern Nigeria and over 684,000 IDPs in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, and 304,000 refugees in the four countries.
If nothing is urgently done, Nigerian women and girls will continue to die in their numbers. We demand female inclusion urgently, the adoption of a gender quota, and equality across all spheres in Nigeria.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been a surge in sexual and gender-based violence and violence against women and girls, breakdown of law and order, and a growing amount of mortality. According to Statista, the global No 1 business data platform, Nigeria has the third-highest number of IDPs in Africa. By mid-2020, it counted 2.6 million IDPs.
We are tired of being used as though we are objects for negotiation, kidnapped as sex companions, and today many are in the forests and forced marriages simply because of our gender, an act that is clearly modern-day slavery.
The best gift our lawmakers can give to Nigerian women as we commemorate the IWD is a reconsideration of the gender bills; it is fair and the right thing to do, to ensure the inclusion of women in every space.
They must ensure concrete means to address the myriads of concerns we face here in Nigeria. Why it seems impossible to occupy spaces here but when we travel out, we do exploits beggar belief.
It sounds ironic that two Nigerians, Amina Mohammed and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, sit as the fifth Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and the seventh Director-General of the World Trade Organisation respectively. But in their own country, religion and patriarchy would have made it impossible for them to assume those positions.
Women’s political participation has been grossly undermined by the predominance of a powerful class of male political elite who have historically run the political system. This reduces the chances of women being nominated at the party level, let alone winning the elections. Nigerian political parties must consider incorporating quota systems into their constitutions to encourage female participation.
On their part, the National Assembly must pass into law the 35 per cent minimum female representation in the cabinet as per the national gender policy. This will provide a good starting point.
Political parties should play out their gender policies and move away from that toga called “office of the woman leader”, we want more, give us equal spaces because our voices matter!
How is it that poverty wears a female face in Nigeria across the tens of ethnic groups? Currently, being a woman in Nigeria means you’re oppressed, marginalised, and referred to as the weaker sex; constantly being reminded daily that you belong and will end up in the kitchen.
If Nigeria is truly serious about attaining inclusive and sustainable development, gender equality must be brought to the fore of the government’s agenda and considered a high priority issue by everyone, organisation, and community.
It is time to remove those restrictive clauses, culture, and traditions that foster bias and discrimination against women and girls. It is puzzling that fathers refuse their daughters to experience the same measure they meted out to their wives, a clear indication that daughters occupy their father’s hearts.
Collectively everyone everywhere can strive for women’s equality and continue to make positive gains. We must stop the girl-child stigma, begin to sponsor female aspirants/candidates, create inclusive work environments, amplify women’s voices, and stop the bias!
It is time the National Assembly reconsidered all gender bills and approved them as presently constituted. That is the best gift to commemorate the 2022 International Women’s Day, anything less amounts to gender-based violence!
Happy International Women’s Day, sisters.
Nkwo is the Communications Officer of the Nigerian Feminist Forum
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