In Nigeria, both at the national and state level, women have received the short end of the stick with respect to political representation, even beyond politics.
According to data from Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), fifteen out of the thirty-six states in Nigeria have zero women representation in their parliament.
Data from Statista shows that only 6% of the total elected lawmakers in the current Nigerian National Assembly are women. At the state level, the figure is even lower at 4.5%.
This low level of representation does not only set the country back in attaining the 30% and 35% affirmative action as prescribed by the Beijing Platform for Action and National Gender Policy respectively, but also excludes women from being part of the governance process in the states and at the federal level, despite making up almost half of the population.
Since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999, six general elections have been conducted and women have vied for different positions but have recorded poor results, minimal gains and slow progress.
For instance, in 1999, women made up only 1.2% of the 990 elected lawmakers in the States’ Houses of Assembly (SHoA) in the country.
The 2003 and 2007 general elections recorded little increase. The percentage of women representation in the SHoA across the country increased to 3.8% and 5.3%, respectively.
In 2011, the 36 states in the country had a total of 990 seats in their States’ Houses of Assembly (SHoA). Out of that, women had only 62 seats, a meager of 6.3%.
As worrisome as the numbers were in previous elections, the number of seats occupied by women across the 36 SHoA dropped to 46 in 2015, bringing their total representation to only 4.6%.
A state-by-state analysis shows that Abia state had the highest number of female legislators in the country in 2015. Women occupied 5 seats out of the 24 in the state.
Anambra, Bayelsa and Kwara states followed with 4 female SHoA members each. Akwa-Ibom, Cross Rivers and Enugu came next with 3 members each.
Then Adamawa, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Lagos, Rivers and Ondo had just 2 females each in their SHoA. With the exception of Bauchi, Delta, Edo, Imo and Oyo that had 1 female each, other states which are mostly in the Northern region had zero women representation in their SHoA.
Rather than improvement, the numbers dropped again in 2019. Only 45, representing 4.5% of States’ House of Assembly members elected in 2019 were women. Fourteen states recorded zero female representation.
Like the 2015 figure, the Northern region accounted for most of the states where no women were elected to serve in the SHoA.
Abia state pedalled backwards, from having the highest number of female legislators in its SHoA in 2015 it became an all male-parliament in 2019, as no woman was elected.
By region, the North West has the lowest female representation. Only 1 out of the 7 states that make up that region has a female legislator.
The South West region on the other hand has the highest number of female legislators elected in their states’ parliament in 2019 although the numbers are still abysmally low.
Experts Highlight High Cost, Poor Media Coverage, Others as Barriers to Female Participation in Politics
Damilola Agbalojobi, a political scientist and gender specialist, attributes the high cost of politics, poor media coverage of female candidates and societal factors such as cultural or religious norms surrounding issues like marriage and the burden of care as some of the factors affecting women participation in politics in Nigeria.
According to the gender specialist, oftentimes, women do not have enough money to pay for the mandatory expression of interest and nomination forms required by political parties to run for positions on their platforms. Not to mention the huge cost required to run an election campaign.
She explained that the poor access of women to education means poor access to gainful employment which makes it more difficult for them to follow through the process of getting leadership positions.
The latest Labour Force Statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in the fourth quarter of 2020 puts female unemployment rate at 35.2%, a rise from the 31.6% recorded in the second quarter.
When this is put into perspective, it shows that many women are not employed in Nigeria. Thus, may not have access to the necessary resources to pursue political ambitions since money is a necessity in contesting for political office, especially in the Nigerian context.
Bukola Saraki, the former President of the Senate also hit on the subject of the high cost of elections in Nigeria in a Twitter space that was organized last week.
The President of the 8th National Assembly noted that elections are expensive everywhere in the world, Nigeria inclusive.
The expensive nature of elections is believed to discourage female participation therefore leading to low representation.
Speaking on media coverage, Agbalojobi stated that women don’t have the same media coverage with respect to political activities compared to their male counterparts. In her view, this also affects women’s chances of getting elected/representation in politics.
Desmond Ekeh corroborated this in this article titled “Media and Gender Inequality in Nigerian Politics”. According to him, his analysis of two major nationally circulated newspapers in Nigeria, 28 days prior to the 2015 general election revealed that the female presidential candidate in the race did not receive media attention and her activities were not adequately covered in the media compared with her male counterparts in the other two parties.
The implication of this could be that less people are likely to be aware of her political activities, agenda, strategy etc. thus, further impacting the chances of winning. This might be worse at the state level given that more attention seems to be at national level.
In conversation with Dataphyte, Professor Sonaiya Oluremi, a presidential candidate in the 2015 general election also highlighted the issue of finance and the political culture that has been developed over the years as some of the barriers standing in the way of women from participating fully in politics.
She explained that the Nigerian state, politically, has been captured by a few people, a political class which has continued to just circulate access to political positions among their members.
According to her, some of them have been there for many years and have also erected some very strong barriers which many women are unable to confront. One of the barriers being the expensive nature of politics in Nigeria which keeps women out.
Speaking on how to ensure that more women are represented in politics both at the state and national level especially in the 2023 general elections, the former presidential candidate said she hopes that the Bill that seeks an additional 111 special seats for women in the National Assembly becomes a law and also hope that such will be done at the state level too. Although she believes that women can compete favourably if there was a level playing ground given that they have the competence and capacity to contribute significantly to the development of Nigeria politically just as they are doing in other spheres of life.
Abdulmalik-Bashir Mopelola, a commissioner of Women Affairs in Kwara state, noted that the issue of policy needs to be addressed if women would be encouraged to participate in politics.
She further noted that it is important to put in place institutional parameters that assist women who want to venture into politics including harnessing the capacity of women.
Mopelola also reiterated the importance of planned actions by the government towards ensuring that women are well represented in politics.