Of the two mainstream national parties, only the APC picked very insignificant percentage of women aspirants to run in the forthcoming elections in 2019.
Emmanuel Onwubiko
Few hours back, I strolled into one of the key offices under the office of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with a singular matter for constructive dialogue with a friend who is a senior aide of President Muhammadu Buhari. My concern was on the observed lack of observation by the mainstream political parties of the policy framework that greeted the 1995 Fourth United Nations women conference in the Chinese capital of Beijing which basically recommended certain percentages of women inclusion in all aspects of political governance globally. Under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) out of the seventeen key goals, the number five demanded gender equality in terms of appointments into decision making process.
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Given the lack of adherence by the major political parties to the basic imperative of observing gender mainstreaming in deciding aspirants to run for public offices in the forthcoming election, I was seriously worried by the decline in the number of women that emerged from the fratricidal warfare that was termed the party primaries of such major political platforms of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the leading opposition party of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Of the two mainstream national parties, only the All Progressives Congress (APC) picked very insignificant percentage of women aspirants to run for the available slots in the forthcoming elections in 2019. Adamawa has two women who got tickets to stand for office of Senators out of the three slots.
On the other hand, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which for over the decade respected the mainstreaming of women participation in governance, unfortunately did very badly. Take for instance the Federal Government that was administered by the former university don Dr Goodluck Jonathan between 2011 and 2015, made sure that women got a greater chunk of the top flight federal appointments. Women got 33 percent of top appointments made by the administration of Dr Goodluck Jonathan according to statistics made available by the Nigerian Institute of Management. Women, for instance, headed both the petroleum and the national economy portfolio for the duration of the President Jonathan’s era.
Jonathan also gave unfettered opportunities to his wife to engage constructively in pro-women projects which to a very large extent achieved a lot of mileages for the advancement of the rights of women and children. The current government of Muhammadu Buhari is reported to have offered only a paltry 19 percent of such appointments to women which is like 50 percent decline from the benchmark made by the immediate past administration as claimed by Professor Olukunle Iyanda, the respected President of the prestigious Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM). Indeed the NIM accused President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration of sidelining women.
Ironically, the list of those to run for elective offices in the coming election amongst the women members of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has significantly declined compared to the All Progressives Congress which is accused of marginalizing women. The party that is affiliated to the current president known as All Progressives Congress (APC) looks set to present more women to run for offices than any other political party of national significance. For instance the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) schemed out the wife of the renowned South East legend the late Ikemba of Igboland, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu. Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu was rigged out of the Senatorial Primary in Anambra state. These scheming out deliberately of women by political parties preparatory to the 2019 poll is worrisome.
So this friend I met in the presidency also expressed shock and disappointment with the turn of events which according to her will not augur well for the advocacy for gender equity in governance that has gone on in Nigeria for so long. She was rather sad that Nigeria instead of making progress in this area has suddenly declined. She referred this writer to the practice in a place like Rwanda, where in the parliament women make up over fifty percent representation. Not long ago an ugly story also trended about the sexual slavery of Nigerian girls to some European nations just as international news channels found a notorious forest in France whereby Nigerian girls who are trafficked into sexual slavery are engaged in forced prostitution.
The US based Cable News Network reported only last month about the discovery of the forest in France and further reported that the trafficking of Nigerian women for prostitution began in the late 1980s, according to the UN, when women were sent to Italy and forced into sex work. Returning home, they became the first generation of madams. They, in turn, made other young women suffer as they did.
In France, the maximum sentence for human trafficking is life imprisonment. But their juju oath forbids the women from speaking to authorities, making it more difficult for police to take down the networks. The head of the Paris police department in charge of prostitution and trafficking described the difficulties in fighting the crime. “As soon as you dismantle a network, you see the effect in the street,” he told CNN, “but that only lasts, at most, 24 hours, because we create a vacuum for another network to set up.”
What the two stories relayed above show is that Nigeria is experiencing unquantifiable degree of problems associated with promoting, protecting and nurturing the human rights of Nigerian women and babies.
This, therefore, dovetails into the next area of concern which is the necessity for demanding from all aspirants to political offices in the coming election to swear to court affidavits explaining to the electorate what programmes and achievable projects and timelines they would implement in the next four years if they are elected with specific and unique reference to addressing the fundamental developmental issues affecting women and children. If truth be told, the current government has not done well in the area of protecting the human rights of women and children. Women and children have in the last three years suffered the most from the numerous criminal acts of terrorism and bloody violence unleashed by armed bandits including armed Fulani herdsmen. Also, the different levels of government administrations have yet to vigorously implement and enforce laws against human trafficking and the emerging phenomenon of babies’ factory. On the issue of healthcare for women, it is a notorious fact that most public hospitals are dysfunctional even as Nigerian women have become victims of maternal deaths.
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Onwubiko heads the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA)