Women, politics and inclusive governance for development in Nigeria (I)

Being a paper presented at the National Conference of the National Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Oyo State Chapter, December 08, 2016.

1. Introduction

When I was invited to deliver a paper on this theme at this event, my mind raced back to an experience I had as a reporter with the Nigerian Tribune 25years ago.  It was an interview with Mrs Sarah Jibril, the only female presidential aspirant in the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the build up to the ill-fated June 12, 1993 presidential election. Recounting her entrance into the race, she said when she told her husband that she wanted to contest for the Office of President, her husband asked her why she wanted to become the President of the National Association of Women Societies! According to her, her husband could not contemplate that a woman under his roof would aspire to become the president of Nigeria.  In the last presidential election in the United States of America, something similar in impact to this subject was recorded. In one remarkable encounter between the eventual winner of the popular vote in that election, Hilary Clinton and a 9-year old girl, the innocent girl pointedly asked Hilary Clinton, if she would be paid the same salary as male presidents if she wins the presidential election. Between the experiences of Mrs Sarah Jibril and Mrs Hilary Clinton, we saw clear evidence of the challenge that women face in the quest to participate in politics and government and contribute their quota to national development, not only in Nigeria but across the world.

Mr Chairman, please permit me to begin this paper from the conclusion. The conclusion of the paper is that Nigeria is not optimally harnessing her human resources for development by the discrimination against women in politics and in government. The argument is that if, by national statistics, the female gender constitutes 51 percent of the Nigerian population, the involvement of between 7 and 13 percent of women in elective and appointive offices is evidence that Nigeria is short-changing herself by not harnessing the full potentials of her human resources in governance. I have adopted an historical approach to arrive at this conclusion, reviewing the trajectory of women participation in the politics   and government of Nigeria since the advent of Nigeria in 1914.

I begin by doing a brief review of the literature on the concepts of women participation in politics, inclusive governance, development and the nexus between the three concepts.

1. Participation, Inclusive Governance and Development.

The participation of women in politics and government is a subject of concern in the literature because it is assumed that the surest way to protect the interest of women and those issues that are important to them, notably the welfare of children and the family, is their involvement in the decision-making process. The thrust of political participation is involvement in decision making to influence such decisions in the protection and furtherance of those interests that are important to the decision makers (Arowolo and Aluko, 2010). The notion of participation in politics covers a spectrum of engagements in politics and governance.

Okolie (2004) takes political participation to mean the “freedom of expression, association, right to free flow of communication, right to influence decision process and the right to social justice, health services, better working condition and opportunity for franchise”. The right to influence decision making covers the whole gamut of voting in elections as members of the electorate, standing in elections as candidates, membership of decision making bodies like the legislature and executive councils of the government. Although Nigerian women have been involved in all of these engagements over time, their level of engagements remains abysmally low. Nigeria rates among nations with the lowest level of women participation in government, not only at the African continental level but at the global level. Globally, between 1999 and 2009, women representation in national parliaments grew from 13.1% to 18.6%. In Africa, it grew from 10.9% to 17.6%. The Nigerian figure for that period is around 7%. Before examining the details of women participation in politics and government in Nigeria, let me quickly look at the reasons why it is deemed necessary and beneficial to any state to involve its female gender adequately in government.

Dovi (2006) identifies seven reasons as imperatives for women participation in government, each of them pointing at the importance of such involvement. Mr Chairman, permit me to quote her at length. “The role model argument contends that having female representatives improves female citizen’s self-esteem. The role model argument captures how female representatives can “mentor” other females…the justice argument contends that fairness demands that men and women be present in roughly equal numbers in the political arena…The justice argument suggests that the need for female representatives is tied to citizen’s sense of fairness. The trust argument focuses on past betrayals of historically disadvantaged groups. Given the experiences that women have had with men claiming to represent them…The increased participation argument contends that participation rates respond to the number of women in office. Having more women in office will raise the number of women who vote, lobby, and get involved in politics…The legitimacy argument contends that the perceived legitimacy of democratic institutions varies with the number of representatives from historically disadvantaged groups…Evaluations of representative institutions are based on who is present…The transformative argument contends that the presence of women allows democratic institutions to live up to their ideals…According to overlooked interest arguments, democratic deliberations and political agendas can be improved by having female representatives in public office.”

In spite of these arguments that support more involvement of women in government, Nigerian women remain discriminated against in terms of involvement in politics and government. The involvement of Nigerian women in politics has been more as cheer leaders and entertainers in campaign contingents and as voters in elections than as candidates or party officials. An historical review of women engagement in politics and government, as undertaken in the next section, bears this out.

iii.            Women in the politics and government of Nigeria.

The history of women participation in the politics and government of Nigeria has been one of rising expectation and rising frustration. As the advocacy for more women participation reaches its crescendo, so is the increasing frustration of such aspirations in the domain of Nigerian politics and government. Pre-colonial Nigerian history is replete with the exploits of women like Moremi, Queen Amina of Zaria etc whose laudable roles in their respective societies marked the womenfolk out as capable of contributing their fair and equitable shares to the development of their communities. However, the advent of colonialism broke this line of heroism in the rank of women. For instance, while men in colonial Nigeria began the journey to adult suffrage in 1922, such right was not extended to women until 1954. The Clifford Constitution of 1922 introduced property qualification for voting rights when men who paid a minimum of 100 pounds in tax had the power to vote in Lagos and Calabar. The Lytttleton Constitution in 1954 admitted women into the electorate in Western and Eastern Region but the denial of voting rights to women in the North persisted until 1976 (Otivi,2012). In essence, there is a difference of 54 years between the introduction of voting rights for men and women in Nigeria. It is important to note that in spite of such discrimination against women by the colonial government, women nevertheless played prominent role in the fight against such discrimination and the colonial regime in general. We recall the Aba Women’s riot of 1929 in which Aba women rose against the payment of tax and colonialism; it took the colonial government several months to bring the protest under control.. There were also individuals like Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Magraret Ekpo and Hajia Gambo Sawaba who worked for the emancipation of women and end to colonialism.

Nevertheless, the implication of institutionalised discrimination against women participation in politics in the colonial era was evident in the limited role of women in politics in general and specifically in the political parties of that period. The implication of such institutionalised discrimination against women participation in politics was evident in the role of women in politics in general and specifically in the political parties of that era. In the National Council of Nigeria Citizens (NCNC), out of 65 party executives at the national and regional levels, only seven (7) were women. They were actually executive members of the women’s wing of the party. Of the 53 in the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), only four (4) were women. Only two (2) of the 118 party executive members were women in the Action Group while there was no woman in the national and regional executive committees of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) (Nnaji,2009).  It was therefore not surprising that women were almost absent in the composition of governments at the national and regional levels in the First Republic. There was a marginal improvement in the Second Republic although this was too little to stamp women’s influence on the politics of the period. Between 1979 and 1983, there were only three female members in the 449-member House of Representatives and none in the 95 member Senate. A woman, Mrs Franca Afegbua, was elected into the Senate in 1983 and four women won election into the House of Representatives. Only two women were appointed ministers into the federal cabinet in 1979. No woman was elected governor and none was elected Deputy Governor.

It is noteworthy that women were represented in the leadership of a major political party with Mrs Oyibo Odinamadu in the capacity of Deputy National Chairman of the Unity Party of Nigeria. Many of the parties also introduced the position of Woman Leader to increase the visibility of women in their leadership structure. In the present dispensation, there has been gradual but slow advancement in the placement of women in politics and government. In 1999, three women were elected into the Senate of 109 members. In the House of Representatives, there   were 12 women out of 360 members. Only 12 women were elected into Houses of Assembly in the 36 states as against 978 men. There was no woman elected as governor and there was only a woman deputy governor, Mrs Akerele Bucknor, in Lagos State who was however impeached midway into her tenure.

• Akande, Ph.D is a visiting Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State.