POLITICS-NIGERIA: Women Learn the ABC of Winning Elections

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, Jun 2 2003 (IPS) - Women, who make up almost half Nigeria’s population, have gained little in the April polls, despite the vigorous mobilisation and enlightenment campaigns by civil groups, according to women’s groups.

Only three women have made it to the 109-member Senate and less than 10 percent of them to the 360-member House of Representatives.

And, to the chagrin of women’s groups, voters have elected only two women deputy governors in Nigeria’s 36 states.

In the 1994 elections, three female Senators, 12 female members of the House of Representatives and one female deputy governor were elected.

”We are not happy with those figures. We have less than 10 female members of the House of Representatives as against the 12 we had in the last House,” says Toro Oladapo, National Co-coordinator of Women in Nigeria (WIN), a Lagos-based non-governmental organisation (NGO).

”The performance of women is not too encouraging,” she told IPS at the weekend.

"We thought women would achieve at least 15 percent success through mobilisation. But the result is nothing to write home about. It is discouraging,” Oladapo said.

She is also worried that the majority of the women did not win on merit.

”Some of them are either wives of ministers or wives of key people in government or daughters of influential people in society. Women with no such background have failed elections, and we are not happy,” she said

”What is happening now is that either you are a daughter or wife of a wealthy person or of a politically connected person, or of nobody and cannot win elections. These developments are sending dangerous signals that are not encouraging to women,” said Oladapo.

From the pattern of voting, most people voted for parties rather than for individuals in the April elections.

”Many female aspirants represented new parties that were not strong on the ground,” says Olu Okeowo, a Lagos-based political commentator.

One female aspirant, who benefited from being in the right party, is 43-year-old Abike Dabiri. She won a parliamentary seat in Lagos, under the Alliance for Democracy (AD), the ruling party in the Lagos State.

Dabiri, a television journalist, told IPS: ”Being in the right party and being a television personality helped my election”.

But Kafilat Ogbara, who was nominated by the People’s Democratic Party to stand in Lagos, failed.

”I campaigned from house to house and nobody saw me as a woman. I was sure of victory. The results from my agents showed that I won but things changed at the electoral centre. I was made to learn – the hard way – that rigging is part of Nigerian politics, so I lost at that level,” claims Ogbara, who is not contesting the result at the elections tribunal.

Women candidates say the problem always starts at the party primary where candidates are picked. ”In a situation where women are not even nominated by their parties, no matter the mobilisation by women’s groups, nothing can happen. You cannot mobilise people to vote for a woman who is not nominated by her party,” says a political commentator in Lagos.

NGOs say they will demand affirmative action before the 2007 elections, to get parties to cede a certain percentage of elective positions to women in their political structure.

”If we can get the political parties to offer 15 percent of all elective positions to women, we will be moving forward. The civil society will appeal to women legislators to ensure that good policies, that would make it possible for more women to come out and win elections in future, are formulated,” Oladapo said.