There is a low percentage of female candidates in the forthcoming general elections and there are fears over their male opponents defeating them at the polls due to various factors, writes LEKE BAIYEWU
Nigeria is approaching another general election, which is another opportunity for the people to select, with their votes, a new leadership at the federal and state levels. Candidates had emerged from the primaries conducted by the 18 political parties in 2022.
For the 2023 general elections scheduled to hold on February 25 and March 11, political pundits have said Nigerian women have crossed one of two hurdles. The first is getting more women to emerge as candidates of the political parties, while the second is for them to win the elections. Already, gender advocates have criticised the outcome of the primaries conducted by the parties due to the number of female candidates. They argued that the country was not ready to embrace gender equality and equal participation in politics and governance.
In Nigeria, apart from the popularity and competence of an aspirant, there seems to be other factors that determine who wins a party’s ticket, some of which are cultural and ethno-religious. This is why it has been observed that one region produces more female political leaders and public servants than the other. Between the geopolitical zones too; South-West, South-East, South-South, North-Central, North-East and North-West, some produce more female candidates than the others.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, Nigeria’s electoral umpire, has released a list of candidates fielded by the 18 political parties for elective offices in the forthcoming elections. A total of 1,524 women will be contesting the polls, which shows the low percentage of women in the election.
For instance, in the presidential election, there are 36 candidates and their running mates. But out of this, only the Allied Peoples Movement has a female presidential candidate, Ojei Princess Chichi.
For the National Assembly, about 1,101 candidates are vying for the 109 seats in the Senate and 3,122 for the 360 seats in the House of Representatives. Out of the 4,223 candidates contesting the 469 legislative seats, 3,875 are males while there are only 381 females. The breakdown shows that there are 92 for the Senate and 288 for the House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, out of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Kano, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara did not field any female candidate for the Senate while Jigawa State did not field any female candidate for the House of Representatives.
At the state level, governorship election will hold in only 28 out of the 36 states. Across the states and political parties, there are 837 candidates and running mates, out of which only 124 are females.
For the House of Assembly election, there are 10,231 candidates from the 18 political parties across the states, out of which only 1,019 are females.
The low representation of women in leadership positions has been there for a long time. It is almost 24 years since Nigeria returned to democracy, the longest in its history. The forthcoming election will be the seventh general election since the Fourth Republic began – 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019 and 2023.
Clearly, the country has grown in population and economy, but the level of women participation in politics is still very low. Nigerian women have been widely acclaimed for excelling in the private and public sectors but politics remains the only territory they still struggle to conquer.
Since 1999, the country has had four presidents and over 100 state governors, but no woman has been elected to occupy either of the positions, neither has a woman become the vice-president.
Arguably, the most prominent female Nigerian to have attempted being president several times – on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party – is Sarah Jibril. She had held key positions at the state level and later became a presidential aide. Prof Remi Sonaiya also contested the presidency. Another prominent female presidential aspirant is Oby Ezekwesili.
At the federal level, neither the executive nor the legislative arm of government has been successfully led by a woman. It is only in the judiciary that a female has risen to the peak, being the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloma Mukhtar. Notably, this is not an elective position, but one largely based on career progression and competence.
But in the federal legislature, no woman has ever been the president of the senate or deputy senate president. The position of the Majority Leader is the highest a woman has held in the upper chamber. Several women have been ministers but their percentage in the federal cabinet is still a subject of criticism.
At the state level, only Virginia Etiaba of Anambra State has occupied the governorship seat. She became the first female governor after the then Governor Peter Obi was impeached by the state House of Assembly. She was in office between November 2006 and February 2007. Her reign came to an end when an Appeal Court nullified Obi’s impeachment and returned him as the governor.
Nevertheless, several women have served as deputy governors, the majority of them from the South-West, especially Lagos State, which has seen four females emerging as deputy governors. A member of the Senate, Biodun Olujimi, is also a former deputy governor of Ekiti State.
Also, a few women have headed state Houses of Assembly, one of them being Mrs Titi Oseni, who was the first female Speaker in Ogun State and Nigeria.
Several efforts especially by women in the National Assembly to create an enabling political environment for women have failed. For instance, what would have been a major breakthrough for the federal parliament suffered a major setback during the last constitution amendment.
Members of the Senate on July 26, 2017 voted on constitution alteration bills and majority of the lawmakers voted against affirmative action – 35 per cent and 20 per cent – at both the federal and state levels, respectively. They also rejected the proposed alteration to Section 25 of the 1999 Constitution (As amended) to guarantee a married woman’s right to choose either her origin by birth or by marriage for appointment or election.
The current 9th National Assembly has also made efforts to allow more women to participate in politics and governance, especially in the ongoing review of the 1999 Constitution, but the efforts have proved abortive.
The House on March 8, 2022 reversed itself on three gender-related bills that failed to pass in the ongoing amendments to the 1999 Constitution. The Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, had called for a rescission of the votes on the affected bills after the lawmakers held an executive (closed-door) session.
While there are five gender bills, those to be revisited are Bills 36, 37 and 38. Bill 36 seeks to “expand the scope of citizenship by registration” by allowing a foreigner – male or female – who marries a Nigerian to become a Nigerian citizen. Bill 37 seeks to “provide for affirmative action (35 per cent of leadership slots) for women in political party administration. Bill 38 is to “provide criteria for qualification to become an indigene of a state in Nigeria,” such that a woman from a state who is married to a man from another state and lives with her husband for five years, becomes an indigene of the man’s state and is eligible to occupy public offices in her husband’s state.
Those dropped included Bill 35 which was to “provide for special seats for women in the National and state Houses of Assembly” and Bill 68 which gives women a quota in the federal and state executive councils or ministerial and commissionership seats.
Gbajabiamila noted that the three bills would be included in the second batch of amendment bills to be considered in about four weeks’ time.
At an event organised by the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians to commemorate the 2021 edition of the International Women’s Day which was held in Abuja later in the day, Gbajabiamila said the parliament would be considering amendments to the constitution to further allow women participation in politics and governance of Nigeria. He noted that the lawmakers would especially focus on clauses that set “hurdles” for the female gender in the scheme of things.
Also at the event, the Chairperson of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians, Zainab Gimba, perhaps to assuage the fears of men who don’t want to be led or governed by women for socio-cultural and religious reasons, stated that “the rise of women is not about the displacement of men but a call to give equal opportunity to women to play their complementary role in a gender-balanced world.”
Again, on April 22, 2021, Gbajabiamila advocated the inclusion of provisions in the constitution to guarantee a “more equal society where both men and women can contribute to the country’s development.” He noted that doing so was the only way that Nigeria could achieve the success of its desired goals, adding that women, in particular, should be free to “pursue their highest aspirations and achieve their maximum potential.”
At the same event, the Chairman of the House Committee on Women Affairs, Oriyomi Onanuga, stated that both the constitution and the Electoral Act needed “re-engineering to reflect equity.”
On March 10, 2021, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Women in Parliament, Taiwo Oluga, proposed an amendment to the constitution to ensure that each state is represented by at least a female at the Senate at all times. While speaking with non-government organisations and partners in Abuja, Oluga noted that the bill would soon be up for second reading in the House. It would mean that women would occupy not less than one-third of the 109 seats.
The Deputy Chief Whip of the House, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, and 85 other members, had proposed an amendment to the constitution to create a total of 111 additional seats in the National Assembly exclusively for women.
The Senate currently has 109 seats while the House has 360. Each of the 36 states has three Senate seats and a representative from the Federal Capital Territory, while the membership of the House is based on the population size of each state. The bill now sought to create an additional Senate seat for each state, including the FCT, bringing total seats in the Senate to 146. For the House, two additional seats will be created in each state as well as the FCT, making an additional 74 seats, bringing the total to 434.
“Women have only 4.4 per cent representation in the 9th National Assembly. You may wish to note that Nigeria has been identified as the worst performer in women representation in parliaments in the West African region, and one of the lowest in the whole of Africa. This is evidenced in the most recent Inter-Parliamentary Union ranking of women in parliaments, where Nigeria ranks 179 out of 187 countries worldwide,” Onyejeocha said.
However, none of these bills passed in both the Senate and the House. It was so bad that despite the presence of the wives to the President and Vice-President, Aisha Buhari and Dolapo Osinbajo, respectively, in the chambers to witness the sitting as the lawmakers voted on the gender bills, they failed to pass. They were not part of the 44 bills transmitted to the state Houses of Assembly for concurrence, 35 of which have now been voted on and transmitted to the President for assent.
When it appeared that the Federal Government of Nigeria was breaching the 35 per cent affirmative action as contained in the National Gender Policy 2006, some civil society organisations had, in 2020, sued the government for alleged marginalisation of women under the regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd). The CSOs had argued that the “overwhelmingly predominant appointment of the male gender into decision-making positions of the federation” was wrong, unlawful, unconstitutional, and a violation of the provisions of the earlier cited laws.
In her analysis of the situation of women in politics and the low number of electoral candidates, Onanuga decried that the female folks have had hard times but will keep pushing for better opportunities in the political space.
She said, “It does not feel good. It is not uhuru yet. We are not happy with the situation as it is. We have to just keep on talking. We cannot give up. It is not a good comparison at all, which means that out of the 10 per cent (women among the candidates), what is the guarantee that we are not going back to the two per cent that we have in the legislature in the 9th Assembly?
“Is that not the same thing we have been screaming over? Are we sure that we are going to make more (percentage) than that? It is not a good analysis; it is not a good figure. But what do we do? We have to keep on talking.”
The lawmaker noted that though the House made a U-turn on three of the five ‘gender bills’ in the ongoing amendments to the constitution, the proposals would only pass if other critical stakeholders in the process welcomed them. When asked if there was any likelihood of the bills being passed before the end of the 9th Assembly, she said, “I cannot answer that question.” According to her, it is the state Houses of Assembly that would determine the fate of the bills.”
While the House revisited the bills, the Senate had stated that there was no going back on them, whereas the two chambers need to pass the bills before they are transmitted to the states for concurrence.
“It is one thing for the National Assembly to do something; it is another for the state assemblies to concur (with it). That is why I said we just have to keep talking; we have to keep moving on, we cannot stop,” Onanuga stated.
