Women Can Make The Difference In Politics – Rt. Hon Femi Gbajabiamila

CHUKA UBAH

The Honourable Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, has posited that he believes strongly that women can make the desired difference if given equal seats at the political tables across board.

The Speaker made his position known at The Women In Politics Dialogue, Organised By Women In Management, Business And Public Service (Wimbiz) on Saturday 12th October, 2019, at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.

He said, “I believe, and the historical evidence suggests that when women take part in the politics of their nations, they can make a difference. Women’s participation in elected office prioritises policies that focus on the key development indicators of quality of life, community, family, and protection of the most vulnerable in our society. It is also evident, that economic and social advancement for women will not be achieved to the extent we desire and at the pace we expect, until women have an equal seat at the political table where the grand decisions of nationhood are made”.
“In Nigeria, we contend with a culture that has created, and too often continues to encourage and tolerate practices that disenfranchise our women, limit educational and economic opportunities available to them and restrict their ability to reach their highest potential. And it is here, that any and all successful efforts at reform must begin, because our present circumstances are not a function of statutory obstacles for women who wish to participate in politics or the absence of laws that protect your interest in this regard. This is but one more time in the great march of history when the forces of progress and change, must confront and defeat the rear-guard of conservatism, armed with superior argument and better organisation, motivated by the certain knowledge that the arc of the moral universe might be long, but as always, it bends towards justice.”
“There is perhaps an expectation that I will use the opportunity of this platform to set out a list of legislative proposals and make grand pronouncements about constitutional amendments. I did that in my early years in the National Assembly, most memorably by proposing legislation that would have ended the practice of corporate organisations using women as bait to lure clients and acquire deposits, and penalising those who refuse to participate. I learned from these experiences that to achieve our objectives, we must sometimes focus away from proposing legislation for which there is no political support and imposing unworkable mandates that make us feel good but achieve nothing. There are circumstances that call for legislative action to protect rights and impose obligations, but we must not conflate these with those situations when our objectives are better served through other means. Therefore, in the time I have here, I will focus on practical propositions and a political solution to what is for the most part a problem of culture, of history and of politics.”
“The 9th House of Representatives yesterday presented our legislative agenda to the public. Gender equity in economic participation, political representation, access to justice and opportunity, are critical parts of that agenda. We have agreed that over the next four years, the House of Representatives will support and encourage efforts to actively recruit, train and promote women who choose to participate in public service and electoral politics. We will enthusiastically engage with non-governmental organisations, civil society partners and political action committees to organise within the major political parties and at the grassroots to communicate the need to have greater gender diversity amongst political office holders. And we will through the Gender Technical Unit in the National Assembly fund programmes that support women in politics so that as we elect more women, we enable them also to be successful in the discharge of the responsibilities of their office.
In my experience, elections are generally won on four things: candidate, ideas, funding and organisation. I believe that if we recruit more inspired candidates, fund them and provide them organisational support to effectively manage their political operations, we will get more women to participate in electoral politics. These women will have a better chance of winning their party primaries and the general elections. Keep in mind the one universal truth about political parties; they all want to win the elections, and they will often, nominate and support the candidate with the best chance of doing so.”
“I have heard it said that we can achieve increased gender participation in politics by imposing quotas and allocating elective political office. We cannot on the one hand advocate for a new kind of politics dependent on respect for the basic human right of all people to choose their leaders in free and fair elections without interference and imposition, and on the other hand argue for the imposition of quotas in elective office. This is a fundamentally antidemocratic idea, and the proposition collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.”
“The constitution of Nigeria, imperfect as it may be, does not impose any restrictions on women’s participation in politics. In fact, the constitution expressly prohibits any and all gender-based discrimination. Therefore, any conversations around gender quotas in political office cannot occur outside of a constitutional amendment. I worry that the peculiar history of our country is such that we are unlikely to achieve a more equitable society by amending the constitution to accommodate discriminatory practices no matter how well-meaning our motivations may be. The fault lines in our society are too deep, our unresolved conflicts are so great that the worst consequences of such attempts will arrive sooner than our best aspirations no matter how deeply held they might be.”
“The bulk of the work of getting more women to participate in politics and ensuring that more of them can win electoral office, will happen within the political parties in the country. I will encourage all of you who do not yet belong to any political parties to go out after this event and register. And having registered, participate in the engagements and the activities of whatever political party you chose so that when decisions are made in your wards and in your local governments, your voice will be heard. When you register, do not register alone. Gather five of your friends or colleagues or relatives and let them register with you. If you can, get each of those to bring five other people. Organise those people into a caucus and through that caucus you will be able to make demands, negotiate concessions and influence outcomes. Remember, politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards and there is no easy way to achieve political power.”
“I will at the next National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the political party to which I belong, the All Progressives Congress (APC), propose the creation of a special Women’s Victory Fund to support efforts to recruit more women who will contest elections on the platform of the party. The Victory Fund will allow the party, independent of its other activities, to engage with organisations such as WIMBIZ to identify willing and capable women from all works of life to contest for elections at all levels of governance. Through this fund, we will provide them with training, support services and assistance with the enormous funding requirements of electoral contests. This fund will be credited from a percentage of the income from the sale of nomination and expression of interest forms by the party. I encourage leaders of the other national political parties to consider and implement similar proposals.”
“In addition, I believe that direct primaries, freed from the opaque negotiations and horse trading that are the hallmark of the delegate election system will open the internal political space and allow for greater participation by groups that may have previously been locked out of the process. We have begun to experiment with direct primaries in Lagos and other states of the federation. I know that my party will continue in these efforts. I enjoin you to contribute to that conversation.
My participation in politics is a legacy of my mother and I owe my achievements in this arena to her. Now, I am a father of daughters for whom I hold the highest ambitions. At the end of my career in politics, it is my hope that I would have contributed constructively to the achievement of a society where my daughters and all our daughters can live up to their highest aspirations, freed from discrimination on the basis of their gender, and protected from the worst consequences of our patriarchal society.”
“Educational and economic empowerments are the essential first steps to achieving real gender equity. The 9th House of Representatives is committed to achieving comprehensive education reform to address the key issues of access to education, quality of education and ensuring that we have a curriculum that is suited to the demands of our present age. We will drive the policy process and provide the funding necessary to bring our schools into the 21st century in terms of quality of content and of delivery. Taking particular care to ensure that in the girl child is no longer discouraged from participating in the critical Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses that are at the heart of the modern knowledge economy.”
“In the same vein, we will continue to support efforts by the Executive to ensure that government financing for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) business are provided to women entrepreneurs to the same scale as their male counterparts. Economic independence and financial freedom will ensure that our women can make political choices free from the control of the menfolk, including the choice to contest for and hold political office whether in government or within the political parties.”
“We have come a long way since the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women, when Hilary Clinton declared for the world to hear and never forget, “that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, once and for all”. Yet, all the progress we have achieved in that time has not sufficed to balance the scales of gender equity. There is much work yet to be done here at home and all over the world. We are still obliged to ensure in this generation that our women have the highest protection under the law and freed from economic and social victimisation. We must in our lifetimes make it so that no girl child is deprived of an education or married off before she is old enough to understand and grant informed consent. All of these we will do, working together across government and the private sector, through our community groups and religious institutions, schools and colleges and in every other facet of our society.”
“The question for me is what is our end goal and who are we fighting this battle for. The answer to this question will largely determine how successful we are in achieving our goal and how well we sustain the achievement.”
“If this fight is for those of us seated here then we can take the short cut by amending two sections of our constitution on discrimination and federal character but how enduring or effective will that be given our cultural, historical and religious backgrounds and antecedent? However, if the struggle is for those coming behind us and our children, then we must go the way I have tried to espouse or maybe both. It is only then can we truly and permanently break if not shatter the glass ceiling. Either way you can rest assured that I am with you all the way” the Speaker concluded.