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Date:March 12, 2019, 8:34 am

Women in politics and governmentBy Mod - 2 minutes ago - [ Update ]

By Obadiah Maliafia

I AM writing this piece from Rabat, having been invited on the conference circuit in the beautiful Moroccan capital. I missed the governorship and state assembly elections on Saturday. Friday, March 9 was International Women’s Day, an event that was celebrated here with solemnity. Morocco is a Muslim country, but also a progressive one. Women here have made considerable progress, unlike in Nigeria.

During the Obasanjo era women did enjoy some prominence in government. To a lesser extent, they played important roles in the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, as Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, enjoyed the status of de facto prime minister. Another powerful woman was Diezani Allison Madueke. She was virtually a rival for influence with First Lady Dame Patience Goodluck Jonathan.

Ever since, women have fared worse. After the February elections, several female colleagues phoned me with tearful lamentations. One had lost her seat as a senator. They complained about the barefaced robbery, thuggery and intimidation.

I admire Oby Ezekwesili, former presidential candidate of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN. She had thrown in the towel much earlier; resigning from her party in rather acrimonious circumstances. Oby is a national icon. A political scientist and chartered accountant, she was a minister and a former Vice-President of the World Bank. She is also founder-director of the Bring Back our Girls Movement which brought the issue to the forefront of national and world attention. She is eminently qualified to be president of our country, as is my colleague Kingsley Moghalu. Oby became the conscience of our country at a time when most of us behaved like duplicitous cowards. She is among the greatest assets we have in our country today.

Several other women were also presidential candidates. They will have to forgive me for not naming them individually. They gave a good fight and deserve respect.

Sadly, it’s clear that we are going to see even less and less of women in government in the coming four years. I find this very sad. A sage once said that the stature of civilisation is best judged by the way it treats its women. In our contemporary politics, women are hardly to be seen where it matters most. There are hardly any women chairmen of political parties. At party level, where the metaphorical sausages are made, the ugly jostling and elbowing puts off a lot of the women folks.

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The way politicians conduct business puts off a lot of decent, respectable women. Many party caucuses take place at the wee hours and in greasy, dodgy, smoke-filled chambers. Only women of a certain type will brave it into such meetings at such unholy hours. A nursing mother or a loyal, faithful wife, is, ipso facto, patently excluded.

According women their rightful place is not a matter of pandering to the contemporary fads of political correctness; it is an imperative of social justice. But I am not naïve enough to believe it can happen merely through moral suasion. We will have to institute it in our laws for it to have any effect at all.

The Scandinavian countries have been way ahead of other advanced democracies for a long time. Women have occupied prominent roles in the political life of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland for decades. They make up the majority of parliamentarians in several of those countries. The first Danish female Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, was elected in 2015. Finland has led the pack, with nearly 60 percent of women occupying ministerial positions at one stage. The average has been 40 percent for the Nordic countries. Erna Solberg, a woman, is the current Prime Minister of Norway. She follows in the footsteps of another woman compatriot, Gro Harlem Brundtland, who was Prime Minister during the years 1990 to 1996.

Several African countries have made advances way ahead of Nigeria. More than 40 percent of parliamentary positions in Uganda are occupied by women. They are also well represented at cabinet level. But the real trail-blazer in Africa is Rwanda, where Paul Kagame straddles like a colossus. I once described the Rwandan leader as both a “Lenin and a Tsar”. I have had cause to moderate my position. Given the bloody historical trajectory of that country, I am convinced that Rwanda needs a strong pair of hands to steer the ship of state. He may be stern and authoritarian, but I am convinced he is a progressive and highly effective leader. In Rwanda, women occupy at least 50 percent of the parliamentary seats. The President of the National Assembly has always tended to be a woman.

We need more women in politics because women have great gifts for nurturing life. They are less prone to violence than men. They are also evidently less corrupt. You are unlikely to find women being used as thugs at polling sites. They are kinder and more humane than men.

We Nigerian men ought to be ashamed of ourselves for consigning women to such a lowly status in our body politic. President Muhammadu Buhari sent the wrong signal when, in front of German Chancellor Angela Markel, he told the whole world that his wife belongs “to za oza room”. The German Chancellor was not at all amused. Like many Nigerians, I admire Aisha Buhari: an intelligent, sincere and outspoken woman. I hope that in his second coming, President Buhari will see the wisdom in restoring to her the status of First Lady of our great Federal Republic. The fact that some of her predecessors abused that office is no reason why she should be denied her destiny.

Women may not always have been visible in the leadership traditions of ancient Africa, but they always occupied powerful roles. There is the legend of Oloori Moremi of Ile-Ife. The poetess Nana Asma’u, daughter of Shehu Usman Danfodio, was a powerful and a highly learned woman in her own right. So was Queen Amina of Zazzau before her. Princess Inikpi was an influential royal in Igala Kingdom. Emotan was a revered Bini woman who saved Oba Ewuare the Great from being murdered. So was Queen Idia who secured Bini Kingdom for her son Oba Esigie. In modern times Margaret Ekpo, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Gambo Sawaba and Hajiya Laila Dogonyaro are all heroines of our great country. History will never forget Dora Akinyuli and Ameyo Stella Adadevoh and her colleagues who sacrificed so much for public health in our country.

But we are not talking about just any type of woman. We need women of talent and virtue, not like the one who swore to me that she is prepared to sleep with any dog “to get to the top”.

Giving more room for women in the public arena is in line with all the international norms and conventions to which we are signatories: Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, the Beijing Platform of Action the Sustainable Development, SDGs, the African Charter on Human and People’s Right, the Maputo Protocol focusing on the rights of African women.

Even the most powerful potentate on earth came out of a woman. Even the Pope did not come out of a man! Whoever you are, you must have spent nine months inside the womb of a woman who nurtured and brought you to life. Strong men respect women; weak, insecure men are threatened by them, especially in the Northern feudal-patriarchy where Muslim women remain hellishly oppressed. We all have mothers, sisters, aunties, wives and daughters. We would feel highly diminished as a people if they were all consigned to the margins of civilisation.

Source:

www.vanguardngr.com/2019/03/women-in-politics-and-government/