Nigeria does not lack a reservoir of real and viable women. They dominate the academia and the professions; but sadly, at preset they are few and far apart in politics. Their First Eleven are not coming out. This is where we call on all those young ladies parading intimidating credentials from some of the best institutions in Europe and the Americas, who show up on SOCIAL MEDIA every four years, wanting to be this and that, to come and properly enroll in the process of knowing their country, the politics and the people. Nigerian politics has come a long way that not much can be attained by cheap, sporadic shots! In this new effort, all hands must be on deck – Nigerian men must release their wives to meaningfully participate in politics while political parties must reduce those unholy-hours meeting that have been hindrances to women participation to the barest minimum.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n times like these, we are reminded of the concept of Universal Adult Suffrage, which guarantees the right of all adult citizens to vote and be voted for, irrespective of property ownership, class, income, race, gender or ethnicity.It also begins to dawn on us that in Nigeria, women have not been properly assimilated in the scheme of things.
We cannot always escape the imperative for compensatory justice for women. But we soon stampede ourselves into measures that assume the character of a battle of the sexes in which every approach comes out wrong.
Even the women who are largely the victims of our age-long oppression are deluded into believing that they can go it alone when it comes to the issue of elections.
From one jamboree to the other; from one seminar to another Workshop; and, indeed, from all the gatherings and forums they have across the country, the same communiqué is replicated – since women make up more than 52 percent of the country’s population. They must all return home to galvanize the womenfolk into voting for women.
They are perhaps oblivious of the fact that to be voted for at a general election, you must first emerge as your party’s candidate from the nomination process. It is at the early stage of nomination that the women get cut off.
When it comes to elections, there are salient factors in the system, which put heavy pressures on the women’s votes that pale their so-called numerical strength into insignificance.
These same women are wives, mothers, daughters, sisters and aunts to men and they are also members of their different political parties. On the voting day, a woman soon finds that the contending forces from these relationships far outweigh that from the single factor of womanhood.
In essence, every candidate requires the votes of men and women to win. There is no such rigid rule as women voting for women and men for men.
On a broader base, men are likely to maintain that there is nothing preventing women from competing on equal footing with their male counterparts. This may be true but it represents a harsh reality that totally ignores the fact of history.
For women, the prescription here is like being engaged in a long distance race in which some of the runners are forcibly held back at the starting line until the other runners have passed the halfway mark.
For a very long time, we realized that education has been a driving force for development. Women were denied access to education. The few who went to school were given access to restricted areas – while their male counterparts went to Engineering school, they went for typing and secretarial studies.
Our political platform has been male-dominated all along. We suddenly realize that we cannot continue this way and that our women must be carried along. We say in the abstract, that women must play catch-up and catch up, they never will!
Our type of situation in which women are almost totally excluded is repugnant to Julius Nyere, the late President of Tanzania. Hear him: “The two legs on which any nation should stand and walk are its manhood and womanhood”.
In all this, there is no alternative to meaningful affirmative action and compensatory justice for women.
Affirmative action or preferential treatment enjoys full support from the fact that it is required by justice in order to atone for past wrongs. It makes sense for anyone ordering an offender to cease discriminating to also make compensatory award for previous injuries.
There is no reason why a society that has discriminated against women for so long should not be required to make what is at best a most modest compensation for past wrongs.
We have heard of political parties in Nigeria priding themselves for waiving or reducing the nomination fees for female aspirants. This is benign tokenism and it simply begs the question. We do not know of any serious aspirant to a position whose only handicap is that she cannot afford the nomination fee.
The womenfolk should not be satisfied with any Greek gift that costs society nothing. The goals of gender equality cannot be attained if we do not adopt the type of measures that have been adopted in places like the United Nations and Kenya.
The Kenyan Constitution provides that no gender shall occupy more than two-thirds of the positions in any government department. At the United Nations, where male and female candidates are equally qualified for a position, the female candidate gets automatic preference.
We recommend a situation where candidate for principal positions are compelled by superior legislation to have the opposite gender as running mates. Under such an arrangement, at no time will you have the female-folk totally missing from governance.
In all this, the deliberate search for quantity must not becloud the over-riding need for quality. The women we want must be adequately competitive, combative; and capable of winning the election and representing the people. No party will risk fielding you simply because you are a woman, if you cannot win an election.
Nigeria does not lack a reservoir of real and viable women. They dominate the academia and the professions; but sadly, at preset they are few and far apart in politics. Their First Eleven are not coming out.
This is where we call on all those young ladies parading intimidating credentials from some of the best institutions in Europe and the Americas, who show up on SOCIAL MEDIA every four years, wanting to be this and that, to come and properly enroll in the process of knowing their country, the politics and the people. Nigerian politics has come a long way that not much can be attained by cheap, sporadic shots!
In this new effort, all hands must be on deck – Nigerian men must release their wives to meaningfully participate in politics while political parties must reduce those unholy-hours meeting that have been hindrances to women participation to the barest minimum.
Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan is a public affairs analyst and former Chairman, Board of Directors, Edo Broadcasting Service. He can be reached at: joligien@yahoo.com
