Nnedinso Ogaziechi
NO incident since the 20th Century has spoken more to the capacity of women in global politics and leadership than the present fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. From Germany to Denmark, New Zealand to Iceland, Taiwan to Finland, they seem to be saying, ‘Oh men, you guys have perfected the idea of instigating conflicts and wars that take lives but we women only know how to save and nurture lives’. They all run very viable economies too.
From all indications, these female leaders through their proactive measures saved the lives of their citizens by acting fast and decisively. Merkel, the German Chancellor, has a doctoral degree in quantum chemistry. This obviously played a part in how seriously she took the pandemic and her quick response at putting measures in place to stem the spread of the virus. She has a scientific knowledge of the implication of any lethargic attitude towards the spread and was stern and honest.
The leader of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, introduced more than a hundred measures to stem the spread of the virus as far back as January, even without a lockdown. Jacinda Arden of New Zealand was very swift in closing the borders and isolating and blocking visitors to the country, which helped keep the spread low and deaths very minimal. The other female leaders were equally very decisively proactive in carrying out early tests and isolations.
The Round Table conversation tried to not only commend these powerfully productive leaders but to also examine why amidst the tragedies from the pandemic, these women across continents are redefining leadership and reaffirming the fact that leadership qualities do not lie solely with the male gender. These women are merely doing what women do best – leading with love and empathy. They have no egos to protect and no politico-economic business interests to replace empathy with.
Dr. Georgiana Ngeri-Nwagha, the founder, CEO and Chairman of the board at Action for the Needy Foundation and former lecturer at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology, says she is not in any way surprised at the stellar performances of these women leaders because historically, women have always displayed their innate capacity to lead and to protect lives. Women are not distracted by egocentric pursuits in leadership unlike men.
According to her, it is documented that in pre-colonial times in Africa, women provided socio-political leaderships at various levels and even in religion as priestesses and goddesses and left legacies of excellence. The decline in female participation in politics in Africa began with the arrival of colonialists who brought education and religion and mainly boys were encouraged to attend schools, study sciences and arts, while the girls were pushed into studying domestic science, teaching, secretarial studies surreptitiously arming the men for economic and political leaderships.
She pointed out that recent Nigerian political history shows that given equal academic and political opportunities, women have delivered leadership. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has become a poster woman of global corporate world with almost new appointments every other month into global agencies. Late Dora Akunyili redefined NAFDAC as a government agency. Amina Mohammed is today an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. Together with countless other women, the opportunities and exposures given them helped project their brilliant leadership qualities.
To Dr. Ngeri-Nwagha, women have always displayed brilliance in different leadership roles but it does seem that in a country like Nigeria, crass patriarchy always sticks out and the 35% affirmative Action of Beijing 1995 seems abandoned at some point. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo came close to hitting the benchmark. To her, affirmative action is not normally the best option but in the absence of equity in the political field, it seems the best option is to set out some elective and appointive positions for competent and cerebral women to contribute to national development.
She feels that the few women in active partisan politics seem to let the men off too easily by not holding them to their promises during campaigns. She recalls that in her days as the head of Bayelsa Women Forum, the group invited all candidates, including the then governorship candidate, Timipre Silva, to listen to the demands of women and tell them categorically what they need from him. She said they achieved their aim because when Mr. Silva won as governor, he implemented the demands of the women.
Because political participation is financially demanding and the Nigerian women cannot square up to the men does not suggest that women cannot provide admirable leadership like the world is seeing at this time. She believes women are naturally imbued with deep nurturing attributes and empathy given their roles in families as mothers and nurturers. The female leaders are merely effortlessly being mothers to their nations, protecting and taking all empathetic steps to create comfort and wellness.
Dr. Bilikisu Magoro Bilmor, a Development Consultant and Gender/Human Rights advocate, decries the fact that women are very few in the political field, especially in the Northern Region. The performance of the women in global leadership is a clear reminder of all that is possible with women but sadly the Nigerian political space seems to have token spaces for few women. To her, despite having qualified and competent females who often beat the odds to contest for elective positions in the North, it is still seen as a socio-religious taboo by some men.
The fact that in the whole of the North West, there is no single woman either in the House of Representatives or the Senate sums up the pathetic situation of women in the region politically. There is only one woman House of Representatives member from the North East. However, in the whole of the North, she gives kudos to the governor of Kaduna State who has a female deputy governor and females as commissioners of health, social services and heads of few other agencies. Sadly for women too, only one single woman won election into a state House of Assembly and even then she had to go to court to reclaim her mandate.
Dr.Magoro-Bilmor insists that women are not seeking for favours or handouts in the political space but to be included in the leadership evolution processes based on merit because many women are qualified and in positions to contribute to the decisionmaking processes, especially as they suffer more deprivations due to certain bad political decisions. She believes that because women are nurturers, if given a larger political mandate, they would always make the best decisions for development.
She feels that there is a nexus between the crass poverty in the zone and the absence of women in the decision-making processes of the different states. Given the productive capacity of any well-educated woman, she believes that blocking off women based on their gender is an injustice even to the men themselves because the girlchild that is married off and uneducated and without a skill will end up a burden bearing children she can neither feed nor train to be viably productive. The female world leaders being celebrated globally for their leadership beyond this pandemic period are successful because they are well-educated and allowed to contest on a level playing field with men. Their countries operate genuine democracies.
Nigeria must begin to re-evaluate a political process that excludes more than half of the population. Our dialogue continues…
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