Sir: If the Athenians of the first century were around to day, they would surely be heading for Ogun State to observe at close quarters the Senator Ibikunle Amosun (SIA) model of governance.
Secular and religious records bear witness that these ancient Greeks “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new things”. Visitors were mostly welcome only if they came along with strange ideas. It was a path dictated by Socrates who had lived centuries earlier.
In this case, our friends, the Athenians, would particularly be interested in Ogun State because of Amosun’s most recent political innovation of allocating strategic seats in the judiciary of Ogun to women.
In a coup d’état of sorts, Amosun swore in women to take charge of the commanding heights in the judiciary. At the historic event in Abeokuta, the capital, the governor himself admitted that what he was doing was quite novel in a patriarchal society such as ours.
He swore in Mrs Abimbola Akeredolu as the first female Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Ogun State since the creation of state in 1976. Her appointment brought to 13 the number of women in the cabinet of Ogun State.
That figure, in parenthesis, is the highest in the cabinet of any state government in Nigeria.
On the same day and at the same event, the governor unveiled Mrs Patricia Oduniyi as the Solicitor-General and Permanent Secretary in the Justice Ministry. He equally had the honour to swear in the first female Chief Judge of Ogun State, Mrs Olatokunbo Olopade, who was present at the inauguration of the two women. What a triumphal triumvirate!
The importance of the event wasn’t lost on Amosun, nor on all those who have since been mulling the latest achievement of his administration. He said what the world had witnessed was unprecedented in Ogun State.
We all must see what Governor Amosun has done as a revolutionary move that goes beyond a fulfilment of the so-called principle of Affirmative Action. The point is that the world has moved beyond the frontiers of the Beijing Declaration of 1995 which called for 30% allocation of public or political office to women.
The new thinking is no longer about sheer number of women in power. It is about qualitative representation of the fair sex in administration of politics, the economy, sports and indeed in all strata of society. It is about having women strutting in the corridors of power.
For too long, we’ve run our society along male-centric lines that have only stunted full progress of our people and made nonsense of our huge expenditure on manpower and infrastructure.
A wider involvement of women in the affairs of society especially at the apex as indicated by the step Amosun has taken means engaging a critical sector of society in nation-building. It’s a new thinking we must support if society must move on to new heights of advancement in the 21st century. The so-called Asian Tigers are making it because they have leveraged governance and politics for women over the years. No wonder the region has produced more female heads of state and government than any other area on Planet Earth!
• Yetunde Oyefeso,
Iperu Remo, Ogun State.
