by Adrian Joe
Women are the salt of the world, so the Bible says. They are also the mothers of the world, they are created by God to help men and take good care of their families. A critical look at the institutions that help in running and functioning of the state one would begin to wonder and ask the question that: why did women feature insufficiently in key political post and political institutions?, why are they insufficient in holding those offices? Are they not well educated or do they just lack the requisite to get or apply for those offices or they are been incarcerated by poverty or they ignorantly refuse to take profound impact in participating in politics? Is the problem caused by our cultural legacy of our dear country that men are supposedly superior to women? The answers to these framed questions make the core analysis of our discussion.
Since the end of the Fourth Conference on Gender and Development in 1995, held in Beijing, following similar previous conferences in Mexico (1975), Copenhagen (1980), Nairobi (1985), strenuous efforts have been consciously up in place to maximize the development of gender equality in political affairs and International representation by women. To buttress this point, Article 8 of the United Nation laid emphasis on the need for gender mainstreaming and development at all level of political participation and representation. As for Nigeria, a country that got her independent in 1960 has a very low women participation in all branches of government. This is not to say that women have not been working in all these branches of government in Nigeria, but it’s obvious that their representation is very low in holding key political post. During the struggle for self-determination a number of women political activist erupt such as Mrs Magaret Ekpo (a women’s right activist and a social mobilizer), Mrs Janet Mokelu and Mrs Young were all prominent members of the Eastern House of Assembly. There were also political activists such as, the late Mrs Olufunmilayo Ransome Kuti of the Western region and Hajia Gambo Sawaba of the Northern region.
With this, one can easily conclude that women participation in pre-independence era was quiet impressive despite the fact that men dominated the entire liberation struggle mentioned above. Yet women still scramble to participate and eventually got involved. However, there was a dramatic change to women’s participation in politics during Babangida’s regime. This manifested when his wife Maryam Babangida institutionalized the office of the First lady in 1987. She became the first lady to hold such political post and then launch the “Better Life for Rural Women” program. Since then, the office of the First lady has been assigned to the wife of the President up to date, though the office is not constitutionally recognized. Other women who impart in Nigeria politics include the Harvard University scholar and economist Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala who saved the nation’s record of billions of naira. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh also impacted in politics before she got involved in the corruption scandal involving her renovation of her official residence in 2007. Another woman active in Nigeria politics is Princess Stella Odua who was the disposed Minister of Aviation. Others include Mrs Obi Ezekwesili who is the chairman of Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and Professor Dora Akunyili. Moreover, with the explanation above one begins to ask what led to the paucity of women’s representation in Nigeria politics of today despite the fact that they have impacted in politics. There are many factors that led to this, but I am going to expatiate on three of them.
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