This year’s international Women’s Day (IWD) had the theme, #breakthebias as the global focus. Curiously, the coiners of this year’s theme seem to have had a premonition about the incidents that were to unfold in Nigeria’s apex law-making body, the National Assembly. The first day of the month of March saw the lawmakers throw out about five bills that were proposed to help in closing the gender gaps in the country.
These bills were: bill to “expand the scope of citizenship by registration, bill to “provide criteria for qualification to become an indigene of a state in Nigeria,” bill to “give women a quota in the federal and state executive councils or ministerial and commissionership seats,” bill to “provide for affirmative action for women in political party administration”.
Nigerian women groups, civil society organisations, some female politicians and a few spouses of some politicians have been physically protesting at the National Assembly building and across Nigeria for what they consider as a contravention of the provisions of section 42 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended); Articles 2, 3, and 13 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) with their ill-thought-out decision not to pass any of the bills. The protests have been loud and the women have sworn not to rest till the legislature reconsiders the bills.
We are as dismayed as the women of Nigeria and we condemn the National Assembly for acting with insensitivity in a world that has been working towards dismantling all gender insensitive laws for global and national progress. If women constitute about half of the Nigerian population, how do the men feel comfortable operating the economy at half capacity? We expect that every man in the National Assembly should be patriotic and knowledgeable enough to understand the modern political economy which works maximally with inclusivity and gender justice.
We however commend the Federal House of Representative’s decision to reconsider three of the bills; indigeneship bill, citizenship bill and the 35% affirmative action on political parties bill in four weeks. The Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, talked about the procedure to be adopted in harmonising any differences, but we feel that the women do not care for the semantics of the process. We are glad that there were no dissensions when the Speaker called for voice votes for the future reconsideration of the three bills.
At least, this is a good start. We know it may be difficult to justify the creation of additional legislative seats in the states and the National Assembly because it would further balloon the cost of governance, a thing we have been complaining about. If anything, women should find [pace within the existing numbers in the legislature after all, even as things stand, some women have been elected into the states houses of assembly and even the National Assembly on their individual merit.
There is no doubt that the world has gone beyond the cultural and religious parochialism that promote gender inequities across the world. Our law makers must think outside the box and realise the value that women bring to national development. A former third world country like Singapore rose to a first world country under a visionary leader like Lee Kuan Yew because he harnessed the value of his population without gender biases. Rwanda, despite its tragic genocidal war today has the highest women parliamentarians in the world at more than 61% . The country has become the modern African phoenix as it is now the investment and tourism hub in Africa.
Democracy flourishes more with inclusivity and gender justice. We feel some discomfort that the legislature of the most populous black nation has to be hounded by women protesters to do the right thing. It is never a favour to the women to do the most progressive things to aid development of the poverty capital of the world with a plethora of development challenges. The men opposing gender justice must introspect and see themselves as cutting their nose to spite their face. So what suddenly changed between March 1 and 10? If women are good as voters, they are good enough to have a seat at the table. #BREAKTHEBIAS