As the 2023 presidential election draws closer, women under the umbrella of Voice of Women have grilled presidential candidates on their plans to include women in the government when elected.
The programme was funded by MacArthur Foundation, Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA Nigeria) in partnership with Affirmative Action Initiative for Women and Women FM 91.7.
Present at the conference were the presidential candidates of the Labour Party (LP), Mr Peter Obi; Presidential, Young Progressive Party (YPP); Malik-Ado Ibrahim and the Action Alliance (AA); Hamza Al-Mustapha, Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the vice presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Kashim Shettima.
The LP candidate, Mr Obi, while speaking said he believes in women to save the country from collapsing.
“Nigeria is about to hire the next CEO and I appeal to you our mothers that what we are going through today as a country, you will not believe it, our country is collapsing and you can save it, and you mothers are the ones that will suffer more if it goes wrong.
“I believe in the women, and I believe you can save our country. For me, if anybody is coming to tell you what he is going to do tomorrow, let’s start with what he did yesterday, let’s look at his part and where he is coming from.
“I had a female deputy governor, my chief of staff was a woman, my commissioner for planning is woman, commissioner for local government is a woman, commissioner for education and my accountant general were women and so on,” he said.
The former Anambra State governor said that women are far more productive than men, and his success as governor for eight years would be attributed to the role women played in his government.
“When you talk about my success today as a governor, I will attribute it to those women. For me, women are critical, if you want to get Nigeria to move we have to surround ourselves with women.
“What we are going through today is cumulative of leadership failure, we are now about to pick a new leadership and we must go beyond all those considerations of yesterday and think about the future of this country and we cannot do it without the women on the driving seat.
“We must have a law in this country giving women and youth a percentage in all electoral positions and every position in Nigeria,” he added.
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Also, the vice presidential candidate of the APC, Shettima noted that Bola Tinubu who is the presidential candidate of the party involved many women when he was governor of Lagos State.
He said during his administration as governor of Borno State, his cabinet was composed of 25 percent women.
“The estimated measure of assessing any society is the way they treat their women. In 2023, we are not preparing for Olympics, but an institution that relies on the superiority of ideas and tracks records to show.
“Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the first governor in Nigeria to appoint a woman as deputy governor, when he finished his two-term as governor of Lagos State, he was given the opportunity to come to the Senate but he declined and rather sent a woman.
“Twelve years ago, when I became the governor of Borno State, I appointed five women commissioners, that means 25 per cent of my cabinet were women,” he noted.
He, therefore, said the APC government will be friendly to women as they are the backbone of society. He told the women that the Tinubu administration will fight against the abuse of women and prioritise their education.
“An Asiwaju administration will be a government that will be friendly to the women, importantly, they are the backbone of our society, they constitute over 50 per cent of our total population.
“If Nigeria is to reach its full potential, we must give everyone a fair chance to make their best contribution to the well-being and betterment of our nation, the growth of our economy and the achievement of our nation rest on equity and the safeguarding of the fundamental human rights and decency in our society.
“Equity and fairness to women will be a top priority of the Tinubu’s administration. We shall establish the following programmes and policies.
“We will promote more female inclusion in politics and governance. Social inclusion and political empowerment, economic empowerment whereby commercial banks would be compelled to support women in businesses nationwide.
“We will fight domestic violence and abuse, educational priority and help the most disadvantaged in our society,” Shettima added.
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