Former presidential candidate, Oby Ezekwesili, has called on women to learn how to form political parties in a bid to gain political currency to promote gender equality in society.
She said this on Saturday while delivering the keynote address at the 2023 International Women’s Day Awards Gala in Lagos.
The award gala was organised by the diplomatic missions in partnership with the United Nations Women and United Nations Development Programme.
Ezekwesili said, “Those societies that identify (and remove) the key barriers to women participation, and women leadership do better.
“In removing these barriers, which can be social, cultural, which can be economical, financial, which can be systemic in every way, one thing stands out and most women never paid attention to it until now; women must gain political currency.
“If women don’t gain political currency, they cannot join the debate on all the other issues.
“And that is why we should acknowledge those women who are running for one office or the other in the 2023 elections. If I were you and with your PVCs, what you should be saying is, ‘Let me look at the offices that I will be electing people for this year. For as long as the woman ticks the boxes of character, competence and capacity, I don’t care what party they belong to, I’m just going to vote them into office.’
“That has to be the way that women begin to understand the power of the data that gives them such incredible size of the electorate in our society.
“To gain political currency, we now know something more, we now know that the political parties are the gatekeepers of how far women can go in politics. I’m sure that the Minister of Women Affairs, who is a warhorse politician, agrees with what I’m saying.
“We assume that the political parties are not important. They are the gatekeepers, they are the ones that determine whether the woman gets on the ballot or not.
“And so, it is time to be more strategic for all of us in this country, countries around the world, countries where our ambassadors and friends have come from.
“It is now time for women to pay attention to the matter of political parties, how they are formed, how they are run, how their internal democracy works and to the extent that political parties do not allow women to gain currency within them.
“Then women must learn the strategic power of collaborating with young people in the population to form their own political parties. After all, if they don’t give you seat at the table, you take one and arrive at the table.
“If the political parties will not admit of more women gaining the opportunities to run for office, then more women must learn how to form political parties.”
Joining her voice to that of Ezekwesili, the Chairman, Punch Nigeria Limited, Mrs Angela Emuwa, pointed out that it was time that women put their electoral weight to use.
She said, “We have the power to put in our own people. Women who have capacity and capability, we have the power to put them there. Like she (Ezekwesili) said, it doesn’t matter what party they are from, we have to vote them in. We are the ones who are experts at multitasking, we can do many things at the same time, we have the vision. We can do so much at the same time.
“We can form our own party and anyone who wants to join can follow constitution. We are in a position to make changes, we just need to get up and start doing things. We have allowed men to put us under but we can change Nigeria.”
