Women Charge N’Assembly to Enshrine Affirmative Action in Constitution

Tobi Soniyi

Women have called on the National Assembly to incorporate affirmative action in the ongoing review of the constitution by reserving certain forty percent of elective offices at the national, state and council levels for women.

They also called on political parties to include in their constitutions provisions to field women for forty percent of elective offices for which they are sponsoring candidates.

The women noted that for too long, the governments at all levels and the leadership of political parties had paid lip service to getting more women into elective and decision-making offices.

The time, they argued, had come to take concrete steps to achieve these laudable objectives.
The women canvassed these positions at a one-day feminist consultative meeting with stakeholders towards increasing the number of elected women in political leadership across all level by 2023 in Nigeria, in Abuja.

The meeting was organised by the Nigerian Feminist Forum (NFF) and sponsored by the Ford Foundation.
The meeting was attended by the Labour Party, People’s Redemption Party, Action Alliance, Alliance People’s Movement, Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, Young Progressives Parry and the African Democratic Congress among others.

In a communique issued at the end of the meeting participants noted that except affirmative action was backed up with legislation, getting more women into decision making and elective offices would remain a dream.

They noted that political parties were not doing enough to help get more women into elective offices and that unless these parties are compelled by laws, they are not going to do it.

They stated that the political process is skewed in favour of men and called on the National Assembly to intervene by enacting legislation to guarantee women more elective offices.

]They also called on women to come out en masse and participate in politics. According to them, statistics from the Independent National Electoral Commission had shown that men voted more than women during the last general election.

They also called on women to speak out on issues affecting them and should stop the practice of allowing men to decide issues affecting them.
The women called on INEC to deregister political parties that fail to implement provisions on women participation.
They also called for the creation of an electoral offence commission to prosecute perpetrators of electoral violence against women

They called on the government to prosecute people who misappropriate funds and use the institution of state to manipulate processes to further their personal interests.

The Nigerian Feminist Forum is a biennial public policy forum that brings together self-identifying feminists, who through feminist principles challenge the system of power, promoting the learning and teaching of feminist principles and universality of women’s rights.

NFF positions Nigerian feminists at the cutting edge of a movement that demands courage, commitment, strength and analytical skill, in order to make the needed critical analysis that will become a key element in a new politics for Nigeria.