Day Lagos women resolved to vie for political offices

Madam Silifat Bello is a woman leader in her community and wields enormous influence among fellow women. Anytime she speaks, others listen with rapt attention. It was therefore not surprising that when Bello took the floor at a recent workshop organized by Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) on women’s participation in leadership, politics […]

Madam Silifat Bello is a woman leader in her community and wields enormous influence among fellow women. Anytime she speaks, others listen with rapt attention. It was therefore not surprising that when Bello took the floor at a recent workshop organized by Women Advocate Research and Documentation Centre (WARDC) on women’s participation in leadership, politics and governance, not a few of the participants were appreciative of her presentation.
According to Bello, women have  long been relegated to the background owning to factors which are majorly socio-cultural. She listed factors which have hindered women participation in politics over the years as confinement of women to household management, stigmatization of women politicians as those with easy virtues, and womens inability to participate in midnight meetings of political parties.
She said others are inability to raise adequate fund for electioneering campaigns as well as women’s weak nature as against their male counterparts who are violence prone while partaking in politics, among others.
“As we are being relegated, the political landscape is now dominated by our male counterparts. Their initiatives are what we are being led onto. Ours ideas are not welcome. The few among us who manage to get one position or the other carry the stigmatization waywardness with them. It is so bad,” Bello who is also the market leader in Lagos Island said.
But such lamentation wouldn’t have to thrive forever. Bello reminded her fellow women why they need to take the bull by the horn.
“During elections, women form the largest number of the populace. We are the ones that mostly attend political meetings  whether at ward or local government levels. From what I can see so far, all we need is coordination. And with a workshop like this, I’m sure we can move forward. We need more of this and I can tell you if we can take this kind of meeting to our different markets, we will record more successes. And in 2015, we are ready to mobilize en masse to get qualified women into political offices,” she said.
Another participant, Mrs Romoke Ajayi said more than any other time, the women are resolute to take their chances. She said not many women want to go into politics because of the injustices that had so far been meted out to them in the past.
“As we are leaving this gathering, I am taking along the many words of inspirations we have been fed with. We operate at the grassroots and I can tell you we know how to get our people to support our cause. We are returning to start the mobilization right away. Of course the 2015 election is almost gone but I can tell you that we will make appreciable impact this time and by 2019, more women will be out there vying for respective posts in Lagos Island,” Ajayi said.
Folake Kuti, who identifies peculiar challenges facing women political participation in Lagos Island, advised women within Lagos Island community to work together by putting aside all forms of differences.
She said oftentimes the society has consistently accused the women of working at cross-purposes which to a certain extent had reduced their acceptability level.
Kuti also admonished the women to resist attempts to intimidate them. She said it has been observed that the prevalence of challenges against the women folk is actually targeted at waning their influences and making them look inferior.
She said by damning all consequences, the women will survive all threats and will be in better position to make a determined bid that is capable of neutralizing any threat.
In the paper titled, “Building Women for Action in governance and leadership positions in Lagos State,” Grace Ketefe, Deputy Director WARDC, said WARDC with the support of Voices for Change (V4C) intends to expand the political space and decision making for adolescent girls and women (AGW) within Lagos in the next four years with the aim of increasing their self esteem through making people’s attitudes to women increasingly positive.
“In achieving our stated objectives, we are currently working with the V4C which is a UK Aid funded design and implementation programme that is designed to achieve enabling environment for adolescents, girls and women.
“We are also working with the DFID global strategic vision on girls and women defined enabling environment as one which: challenges discrimination against AGW, provides effective legal framework to protect AGW, promotes women’s participation in politics, increases the power of AGW to make informed choices and decisions that have political commitment to services and opportunities for women folk,” Ketefe said.
For WARDC Executive Director, Dr. Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, issues surrounding women empowerment and political emancipation has gone beyond mere roundtable discussions. If anything, pragmatic steps are what need  to be seen.
Speaking on the topic: “Real Development and Women Participation; The Agenda for Positive Change,” Akiyode-Abiola said it is worrisome that gender related development rankings of Nigeria is low. She noted that such abysmal statistic is quite indicative of the need for more participation of women at all levels of development and the needs for lobbying for more gender-responsive public policies to promote gender equality and as such advance the development ladder in Nigeria.
According to the WARDC Executive Director, key findings from ‘Gender in Nigeria Report – 2012 by the British Council’ indicate: that Nigeria’s 80.2 million women and girls have significantly worse life chances than men and compared to their sisters in comparable societies. About 70% of Nigerians (54%) who currently live below the poverty line are women. Up to one third of Nigerian women reported that they have been subjected to some form of violence; while one in five has experienced physical violence in their life time.
She added; “60-79% of the rural work force is women but men are five times more likely to own land. Nearly five times as many judges and permanent secretaries are men rather than women while dropout rates are higher among girls than boys because of gender abuse and violence against girls”.
In addition, she said the executive must ensure that all appointments follow the national gender policy of at least 35 percent women. It must also support constitutional amendment for affirmative action while the legislature must amend the constitution to provide for affirmative action. The political parties must on the other hand provide for at least 35 percent quota for all organs of the party in line with the national gender policy.
“Most importantly too, we must  all stop labeling women as anti party people, cultural deviant; politics of invective to undermine the moral standing of female  aspirants by using abusive language to demoralize them; indignity ploy; political party techniques for elimination of women; Intra party conflicts; pull her down syndrome; security; finance as well as lack of internal party democracy. When these are addressed, women can then be assured of better deal,”  she  said.