‘Women have their special issues as voters, candidates’

Before joining the Nigerian Women Trust Fund, were you into gender advocacy?I did my advocacy mostly through writing about social, women, and mother and child custody right issues. I was a columnist for both ThisDay and Leadership Newspapers for five years.  I joined gender advocacy particularly women’s participation in politics because the right people in […]

Before joining the Nigerian Women Trust Fund, were you into gender advocacy?
I did my advocacy mostly through writing about social, women, and mother and child custody right issues. I was a columnist for both ThisDay and Leadership Newspapers for five years.  I joined gender advocacy particularly women’s participation in politics because the right people in government and right government policies can solve most of the problems confronting women and children.  Caring about women generally to me is the logical thing to do.
If you are a woman, you should automatically be a gender advocate. Women and children suffer the most in the country and if you are female , have a conscience and see the struggles women go through, I feel it is a natural thing to be a gender person or advocate.

What is the Nigerian Women Trust Fund all about?
It is a nonprofit organization established in 2011 and it is a joint collaboration of the civil society, government and even the private sector. It took these three groups almost ten years to create the fund.
Since 1999 there have been a struggle to increase women’s participation  in politics, and all the challenges are known, internal party democracy for most parties is weak, the violence around elections, and the cost of elections.  There was a lot of discussion among civil society groups on addressing the issue and the idea of creating a fund that would serve as a sort of support in the development, raising funds and grants for women, and focus on increasing the quantity and quality of women in governance was muted.
The leadership of fund is in three levels. We have the advisory board, the board of directors, where we have members of civil society , ministry of women affairs and millennium development goals and the management team.

Do you work together with the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development?
We are allied partners in the sense that they sit atop our board, they have oversight knowledge of the fund and support with funding, and the running of the secretariat We basically collaborate on issues relating to women’s political participation.  

What has been the  achievements so far with this fund?
The achievements is varied depending on how you look at it because we have four focus areas. There is  leadership development, fund raising and grant making, research and development, and the other is gender advocacy.
 In terms of gender advocacy, the Nigerian Women Trust Fund has been instrumental in raising the voice of women calling for more women political participation, and raising awareness amongst the populace.
Secondly, we also see a strong link between women’s political participation and violence. If a woman is being violated, she will rarely go into  politics. We have highlighted the issue of people from the Abuja Environmental Protection Board going round to picking up women who are doing their legitimate business.
It is very disturbing, we collaborated with the National Human Rights Commission to sign a petition to the National Assembly March last year. It resulted in public hearing. We wrote letters to the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Inspector General of Police Minister of Women Affairs, Chief of Army Staff because we learnt they were using army officers to pick and abuse these women and brought it to their attention. This  resulted in the House calling a committee meeting and for a public hearing but unfortunately, which I am sure is a result of politics , it got stuck there. Since the first hearing, we have not been called back
The onus is on the leaders and people in the media to ask why they have not continued the public hearing. The abuse is still going on.
Another achievement is working very closely with other women groups to put up a strong position during the National Assembly review because there are many parts of our constitution that we want to change.
Also during the 2011 elections, the organization supported about 150 women across the country, knowing how expensive and hard it is for women to make money towards their own elections.

What are the challenges of the fund?
One of the major challenges is the perception that women don’t have a role in politics and decision making and that they are not good leaders.  It is a challenge because it cuts across all strata of society. We are working on those perceptions and trying to change them. It is often said you cannot change a perception except in a generation so we are trying to do that by enlightening young people so that they can start learning the importance of government in their lives and taking active role in it.
Like myself I voted for the first time in 2011, if you subtract 18 from my years you will see that some voting years were wasted. That was all due to the fact that I didn’t grow up with the proper awareness on how impactful government is and how you should choose  the right people and making them accountable. This may be due partly because we grow up in the military era.
 
What inspired the recent dialogue you organized  between women stakeholders and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)?
Professor Attahiru Jega has been talking about INEC’s plans for the next General Election both at home and abroad. We felt he should discuss with women too because they constitute about half of the population. In some states like Osun, Oyo among others there are more women registered voters.
So if we comprises majority voters in some states why are we not being consulted for our challenges. During the event women told him their challenges. Like the Market Women Association  complained of going to polling booths for accreditation without meeting officials there and other problems.
As a mother and  wife you cannot spend the whole day in a polling unit, leave your child unattended or bring them to the polling units  that may not be safe. INEC needed to hear all these.  That is what informed the meeting as we prepare for the next election and elections in Osun and Ekiti  states later this year.
We felt it was important for INEC to recognize that we are key stakeholders and we have our issues.We have issues like every other person but as women we also have our special issues as candidates and voters.
It was an opportunity for INEC to hear women directly and not through second or third party and share that message with other people and for the women to also hear from INEC.

Are there International development partners supporting the fund?
So far the support we get from international development partners are usually project based. They may like a project we are running and support us through funding, providing materials or technical support and we prefer that because when cash start coming in you cannot predict if the beneficiaries will do what it is meant for.  They fund projects not us as an organization.
We have also been telling the women that support is not going to come in cash anymore like what happened in 2011.instead of giving a candidate half a million naira for instance we could opt to help her print a number of her campaign posters.

Is there any other thing you would like to say?
If we are honest with ourselves most of our leaders since the last 50 years or so have been people who do not wish us well. 70 percent of our budget goes to looking after governance .
As we move towards another election Nigerians should think if we should an over bloated federal government that uses up the bulk of our resources. To me I think this is not practical or sustainable.
Also people keep asking what women in leadership have been doing? But I will ask  what the men there are doing too? We should therefore try to identify people in governance whether male or female who wish us well, and have track records. We should stop things like governors running states for eight years without good records struggling to go to the senate just to remain relevant and siphon more public funds. So we need both good women and men in leadership.
 Out of every three people who have been good leaders in this country, one of them is always a woman inspite of their few numbers in government. So why then are some doubtful that women cannot be good leaders?