Affirmative action and reps’ clamour for increased female cadets

Kolawole Daniel writes on the House of Representatives intervention into proposed plan by the military hierarchy to stop female combatant cadets from the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) programme and recent pronouncements by the Speaker, Honourable Yakubu Dogara, on need to give women more roles in government.

The House of Representatives, as peoples representatives, are constitutionally bound to bring matters that affect the citizenry for discussion and possible solution to the floor of the House during plenary session.

In that light, a lawmaker from Edo State, Honourable Gabriella Omosede Igbinedion brought to the attention of the House a proposed plan to ban female combatant cadets from participating in Nigeria Defence Academy, NDA.

Her intervention made the House to call for increase number of female combatant cadets, and as well urged the Armed Forces Council and the Federal Ministry of Defence to halt the plan to stop admission of combatant female cadets into the Nigerian Defence Academy.

Even at that, the  House further mandated the committees on Defence, Army, Navy and Airforce to investigate the matter and report back in four weeks for further legislative action.

The motion that led to the House resolution sponsored by Honourable  Igbinedion, entitled, “call to halt the proposed plan to stop admission of combatant female cadets into the Nigerian Defence Academy”.

While moving a motion on the matter, Honourable Igbinedion said that section 42(1) of the constitution prohibits discriminatory practices against any person on the basis of sex, stressing that, Nigeria is a signatory to the 1995 Beijing declaration on the support of gender equality and empowerment of women.

According to her, “Affirmative action means positive steps be taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education and all such other areas form which they have been historically been excluded”.

She added that in 2011, “The Nigeria Defence Academy admitted the first set of 20 female cadets into the regular combatant commission which will afford the cadets the opportunity to aspire to head any of the armed services in the future.

“The PUNCH newspaper of Monday 13 November 2017 captioned ‘Military to stop admission of combatant female cadets’ which if true amounts to a major policy reversal of monumental proportion and set back because scrapping the course for women will deny them the opportunity of heading any arm of the Nigerian military.

“That institutions are usually established to promote the provisions of the constitution and not breach them as the move to end the admission of female cadets seem to suggest.”

The media report exposing the purported plan by the military authority to ban female combatants cadet led to a rebuttal by the Director, Defence Information, Major-General John Enenche, denied cancelling training programmes for female combatants.

Major General Eneche had claimed that a news report claiming the programmes had been scrapped was “an act of disinformation.” adding that, all female officers would continue to enjoy the same career benefits available to their male counterparts.

The Punch Newspaper it will be recalled had reported the story on Monday, saying the Nigerian Army, Navy and the Air Force cancelled the inclusive programme at the Nigerian Defence Academy after complaints by unnamed Muslim leaders.

The report had quoted anonymous military personnel as saying that,“The northern Muslim leaders want to prevent a situation where one day, a woman will lead the army and give orders to men”.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan reportedly implemented the changes to incorporate female officers into regular combatants roles, after decades of discriminatory practices that had made it difficult for women to aspire to the top leadership positions in the military.

The policy, which was adopted in 2010 with first female intakes starting in 2011, made it possible for a woman to become the Chief of Army Staff or its equivalent in the Navy and the Air Force.

While House is yet to carry out its investigation into the allegation, just recently the Speaker, Honourable Dogara had course to raise the alarm that stigmatisation of female politicians is one of the major factors responsible for poor participation of women in politics in Nigeria.

Women all over are always not shy to quickly raise alarm about any perceived “injustice” to the women’s fold as far as career or political advancement is concerned.

Questions abound on what flavour the women folk would be bringing to the table, but speaking at the sisth National Women in Parliament summit in Abuja recently, Honourable Dogara, argued that active involvement of women in politics would lead to rapid social, economic progress of Nigeria.

According to him, “The problems and challenges facing women participation in politics in Nigeria in spite of modest strides are deep rooted. They include the patriarchal nature of our traditional society; stigmatisation of women politicians by a largely ignorant society; political thuggery, violence; financial capacity; religious and cultural stereotyping and bottlenecks; educational disadvantage; meeting schedules of political activities are in most cases not convenient for women to attend especially married women etc.”

He revealed that the House of Representatives passed the 35 percent affirmative action clause in the constitution amendment bill, but  the same clause failed in the Senate.

Going down memory lane, the Speaker noted that women have played important roles at various stages of Nigeria’s political development, from  pre-colonial period up to independence in 1960 and the Second Republic and expressed regret that women politicians have not faired well in the Nigeria since 1999.

“The exploits of women such as Queen Bakwa Turuku and her daughter Queen Amina in the ancient city of Zaria is legendary. In Southern Nigeria, Obas ruled in Yourbaland with female Chiefs and produced such prominent women as Moremi of Ife, Emotan of Benin, Omu Okwei of Ossomari,” he said.

He said Nigeria has a lot to learn from the Rwandan example where more than 50 percent of MPs are women saying, “Does Nigeria have something to learn from the Rwandan example? Because of deep-seated cultural attitudes, it may be difficult to reach consensus on affirmative action for elective offices in Nigeria at this point in time.”

The Speaker therefore called on President Muhammadu Buhari to use his executive powers  to help push for more women inclusion in governance because “ it is easier to achieve this affirmative action through executive action. This would require the buy in of political parties and elected officials particularly the President with a singular determination to achieving this. In Nigeria, the political parties have made efforts to remove the requirement of financial contributions or fees for clearance of women to contest various elective offices. What then stops the political parties from affirmative action for women for appointive offices when they win power? We must be prepared to rid ourselves of this pretensions.”

As the House move to torchlight the military operations as far as recruitment of female combatant cadets one hope that the female folks would have cause to smile about the outcome of House intervention.