By Precious Akintulubo
For a balanced representation at the 2023 election polls, women have been urged to support fellow women in Nigeria’s electoral process to tackle the case of gender bias in the electoral process of Nigeria.
In a Twitter space discussion on Wednesday conducted by Africa Data Hub (ADH), this motion was raised by one of the guest speakers, the Chief Vision Officer of LightRay Media, Ejiro “Lady E” Umukoro. She explained how women’s lack of interest in politics is not only caused by political bias and disenfranchisement, but also by ingrained religio-cultural practices, and gender-against-gender socialization.
According to Ejiro “This is a problem that begins right from the home where mothers train their daughters to give more respect and reverence to the menfolk than they give to the women folk. And you can see this play out in politics where women are treated as second-class citizens in Nigeria, which is very wrong. Politicians see women as mere clout mobilisers that help men win elections.
In most cases, men enter politics without experience, but then they are given the privilege to be mentored by other men and the opportunity to learn the ropes to gain experience. Women on the other hand, whether experienced or not, are not given these kinds of privileges, opportunities, or preferences. And where the opportunity exists, often it comes with a caveat of all sorts, something they will not ask of men.
Men who work with female politicians do not make sexual demands on the men who work for them; however, the reverse actually happens when a man is a politician and the woman presents herself to work with sexual demands thrown in as part of the total offer.
This is why women supporting women is a conversation that is starting now and we are seeing how that is changing gradually from the Adamawa politics where the only female contestant was able to knockout her three main rivals, all men, to emerge the governorship candidate for Adamawa State. Women should understand that being part of the political and electoral process requires involvement and participation in political meetings at the ward, community, senatorial, state, and national levels.
Rather than talk only about clothes, shoes, entertainment shows, and whatnot, which does not determine their daily survival, it is very important for women to show a strong interest in politics. When women raise their political and civic intelligence, that is how it begins. This is how they begin to change the narrative and widen the political inclusion.”
STATISTICS OF WOMEN IN NIGERIA’S ELECTORAL PROCESS
According to the National Bureau Of Statistics in 2016, the national average of women’s political participation in Nigeria has remained at 6.7 percent in elective and appointive positions, which is far below the Global Average of 22.5 percent and Africa’s regional average of 23.4 percent and West African sub regional Average of 15 percent.
Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in 2015 shows that only 6 women were appointed to the federal cabinet. At the National Assembly, there were 7 female senators while at the gubernatorial levels there were 6 female deputy governors. Only one female contested for the office of president and four for vice president. Fast track to 2022, there were 4 female presidential contestants, 1 for the governorship position, 3 as deputy governors, and only 1 female spokesperson at the primaries across the parties.
None of the female presidential contestants emerged as the lead candidates for the presidential election. This year’s election has been the most male-centered election in Nigeria, where sitting women senators have been threatened behind the scenes to step down by governors of their states who see the senate seat as a retirement home.
Africa Data Hub-Orodata Science TWITTER SPACE DISCUSS.
With this decreasing number of women in key political spaces and power, the need to discuss and hopefully address this concerning trend was put together by Africa Data Hub (ADH) in partnership with Orodata Science focused on Gender Bias and Electoral Process in Nigeria with guest speakers from diverse angles on Twitter space.
As an introduction to the Twitter Space discuss, the moderator, Patsy Okpara shared a report from the International Center for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) tagged Underrepresentation of women in Nigeria, politics shows that “women make up one of the underrepresented groups in Nigeria.”
She explained that “while some attribute this to a lack of interest in politics by women, others blame it on financial constraints seeing how expensive it is politics have become in Nigeria.”
To get a feel of the audience’s take on possible hidden biases, she asked a random question: “If we had a presidential candidate who is a female, would you vote for her?”
One of the Guest Speaker, a Lecturer in Adekunle Ajasin University and Co-founder of Centre for Citizens Engagement For Growth and Development, Adekunle Akinola stated unequivocally that he would vote for a female presidential candidate giving instances of how women are more fit for administrative responsibilities judging from how they have proven to be effective managers at home.
According to Adekunle “I’m going to vote for a female presidential candidate. Historically, it has
been proven that women know how to manage the home and as well manage the country better than their male counterparts. For instance, the first female senator in the United States was the only US Republican senator that voted against the US invasion of Iraq because of her personality, unlike the male gender who tend to be more aggressive. There are several theoretical arguments that men are more prone to go to war than women because women are mothers who are responsible to their children and husbands. Thus, by extension to their country, evidence shows that women are going to be in a better position to manage the country better.”
Abass, a participant on the Twitter space agreed with Adekunle’s input explaining how women tend to be better candidates as a result of how they manage their homes in addition to how effective and competent they at work with a number of success stories and track records. “Personally, I will vote for a female candidate. We are being trained to believe that the job of women is to be in charge of the home like having kitchen experience unlike administrative experience. However, taking a look at women’s roles at home, they are handling more of the administrative role than men. This by extension enables her to be a leader in the community. I will want to vote for her based on her competency, success story and track record.”
Delving deep into the existence of gender bias in Nigeria’s electoral process, Ejiro analyzed how gender bias in Nigeria’s electoral process has been rampant as a result of economic, religious, and cultural biases. She gave instances of how Christianity and Islamic religion show outright bias and limitation against women using cultural practices from the Arab culture that has nothing to do with Africa even though they share some key traditional practices.
“There is no denying that there is a lot of gender bias. The origin of this goes far way back to the religious aspect and economic bias of the society. In the religious aspect, depending on which Bible translation you use, see the instance where some say humans were made in God’s own image while some other translation will say God made man in his image.
Please take note, the goal here is not to attack, but simply to show how the wordings of texts in the Bible elevated man, not woman, to be in God’s image. If a religion tells you this, that is the origin of a very deep-rooted bias.
The same Christianity teachings categorically were translated as saying that a woman is not meant to speak in the congregation. Thus, with one breath, you’ve discriminated against all women; that only man is qualified to be in God’s image. Yet, the same bible says God created everyone equal and everything was good and perfect.
So where did this bias of one gender lower than the other? It is human thinking. Some Islamic scholars will tell you that some of the teachings in mainstream Islam are not written in the Quran! The religious book itself has nothing to do with Africa. The religious book is one that has its origin in the culture and practices of the Arabs where they mostly dehumanize women and sanction honour killing.”
Further deconstructing the political process, Ejiro said “In the political cycle, we’ve become a society where everything is about money; whereas for hundreds of years prior to now women have been disenfranchised in the area of political funding and source of income for her to run elections, manage her campaigns, or achieve her political goals. We need to bridge that gap with some form
of equity.”
She, however, stated that women are beginning to be more aware of the value of showing interest in politics, attending political meetings no matter the hour, and participating in political discussions, rallies mobilization, and political training programmes. “Women need to know that their fellow women are their own support groups too. And they include market women, women association groups, female professionals, artisans, stay-at-home mums, single women, married women, and sex workers, including women without jobs. Prior to this time, for hundreds of years, women were socialized to only vote for men!
To break from that entrenched misleading mindset requires an intentional rewiring of the mind, social attitudes, and behaviours not to mention re-engineering the mind with regards to religious conditioning that was instilled in women that they are second class and a tool to be used at the pleasure, whims, and caprices of their male counterpart. In addition to this, women must consciously begin to seek male supporters too just like male politicians will court women groups to garner votes. Politics is like starting a business and running it and that is what women must begin to do: develop the skills, enter the political area, know how to mobilise, understand laws and policies, and drive discussions on matters that affect women, children, and even men. Women need to put themselves more out there and not wait on the sideline, waiting to be picked”, she explains.
The second speaker, Adekunle, explains that bias is rampant in the electoral process as a result of a lack of support from religious centers and women’s inability to believe in themselves. “In Nigeria where women are allowed to vote, they are not given the right support that is needed. An instance is the gender equality bill which was struck out of the National Assembly because of the way men think. The first woman that contested in PDP primaries had one vote. This is because Nigeria is a highly religious society. The truth is that we have more women in the church congregation than men but when it comes to church leadership, we have fewer women. So also in the Mosque, all the Imams are men. Basically, if you don’t have a female leader in your religious centers, it becomes problematic to have a female president. Even in Nigerian universities, the position of Vice President is unconventionally reserved for women. This status quo can only change via a lot of awareness and women believing in themselves. There is also the case of women working against women. If other countries can surmount this bias, then it is possible for it to be replicated in Nigeria.”
Are Women Ready to Be Involved in Electoral Process?
A participant, Chisom, a non-profit social impact worker, shared her experience of how she was thrown in the spotlight in a civic society group and immediately felt the impostor syndrome overwhelmed her and she queried her capacity to take on the responsibility as it had to do with politics: “I don’t know about politics, what do I do?” According to Chisom, having now immersed herself more in political discussions, she realized that women need to be willing to get informed and be involved in the political and electoral process. The job of governance should not be left in the hands of the unintelligent to make important decisions, she emphasised.
Another participant, Precious, who was concerned about the outcome of the APC Presidential primaries female aspirant, Barr. Uju Ken Ohanenye who stepped down for Bola Ahmed Tinubu was shocked when she said ‘women are not ready for politics’ was a sad case where the limited chances women have to take on the baton were thrown away with such flimsiness, like a sellout.
To mitigate such outcomes in the future, Ejiro called on women to support and invest in other women and go into the ring as political contenders and not a tool to be used and dumped sending wrong and unintended signals in order to eradicate gender bias in the electoral process in Nigeria. This would require that women too must begin to challenge many of the biases against them enabled and propagated by religious brainwashing, socialisation, political exclusion, economic disadvantages, and cultural limitations that hold them back from advancing in the political and
electoral processes.
