Nigeria's Contradictory Roles for Women

Nigeria's Contradictory Roles for Women  

By: Destiny Tamunoala Emmanuel

The outcome of Tuesday's party primaries of the All Progressives Congress, APC, across the country is a huge contradiction of the Federal Government's variously expressed desire for greater participation of women in national affairs.  

This is so when taken into account alongside the ongoing proposal in the National Assembly for an upgrade in the level of participation by women in our parliament.  

It has been observed in very many quarters by women, and even by some men, over the unfair deal meted out to women by the ruling party in Tuesday's primaries held across the nation.  

Even the few women themselves in the National Assembly who were allegedly unjustifiably humiliated in the primaries are sending an SOS to the highest and final level of both party and governmental authority, in Nigeria, i.e., President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to use his wide powers to review the cases of women in the All Progressives Congress, APC, who were allegedly deliberately sidelined and refused their return to their seats either in the House of Representatives or in the Senate.  

We cannot be preaching A and be doing B. We cannot, on one hand, be talking about enhanced or increased women participation in national affairs while, at the same time, conducting ourselves in irregular manner to further reduce women’s presence and active participation in the affairs of this nation.  

In pursuit of encouraging our women to engage in politics, almost every political party in the country has often waived the heavy sums of money usually imposed for obtaining election forms while only involving them in the payment of the relatively smaller fees for the expression of interest.  

What happened in the APC primaries on Tuesday was a mockery of President Tinubu's noble, genuine, and persistent concern for women’s emancipation in Nigeria and an intolerable consignment of Nigerian women to the back seat.  

We state as a matter of fact that women are better and more fastidious party loyalists. They are also more enduring in their support for wherever they belong, and it is therefore a disservice to them to deliberately forge an embarrassing posture against them in the name of internal party politics.  

We therefore make a strong appeal to Mr. President to reinstate all female members of the National Assembly who were shoved out of their positions and replaced, not by women for that matter, but by men during the immediate past party primaries of the All Progressives Congress, APC, nationwide, thereby taking their party loyalty for granted.  

Please, Mr. President, you have the power to act both at the party level and governmentally to assuage the disappointment of the female members of your party by returning all women to their seats in the National Assembly.