By Tonie Iredia

Nigeria’s federal legislators, last week rejected all the bills in favour of women presented before the National Assembly for consideration. Expectedly, many women activists took the negative outcome of the consideration as a set-back in the agitation for gender equality in the country. Such a view which is purely simplistic if followed, would merely perpetuate the wrong strategy adopted so far by Nigerian women. Unknown to our women activists, they had just made a great leap in the mobilization of Nigerians into better awareness of the subject and why the country is in dire need of gender equality. 

To start with, just one or a few initial attempts can hardly yield commensurate success in any struggle, let alone the serious fight to change men who pretend to be conservatives only for material gains. Nigerian women must depart from that posture and recognize that ‘work in progress’ is a truer reflection of the current situation. To get angry or despair would decimate women ranks and destroy the momentum achieved so far. Enough of strategic mistakes please.

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An obvious reason why the anti-women position will not stand the test of time is because it does not tally with global realities just as none of the points which supposedly influenced it is either rational or persuasive. For example, it is an open secret that the religious explanation often proffered is a mere camouflage for gaining undue advantage. Those who imagine that giving women equal opportunities with men can distort Islam are deliberately seeing the National Assembly as a place of worship. 

Even at that, laws made by our federal legislators are applicable to all. As a result, the reasoning cannot be used to place women of other religions behind men when such other religions do not prescribe such injunction. One legislator who canvassed the view was once a state governor who never created two separate regimes of salaries for men and women. If both sexes earned same salaries during his administration, how can he now oppose gender equality which he allowed in his state when he was governor?

When listing the 5 pillars of democracy, the Rule of Law comes immediately after the Sovereignty of the People. A critical feature of the Rule of Law is that ‘everyone is equal before the law.’ How then can a legislator who subscribes to democracy of which the Rule of Law is an integral part be seen to be arguing within the precincts of a legislature that some people (women) are not equal to other people (men) in the same society? 

The argument is not really a surprise because what Nigerian politicians are known for is to support an issue only when it favours them. If today, a particular party has less men than women the, men elected under such a party would support gender equality, but their position would change to the direct opposite the next day if they defect from their original party. It is against this backdrop that we urge women to not take to heart any selfish argument made during the debate solely for the purpose of achieving a particular result in furtherance of a specific cause. 

One of the mistakes of our women is their conclusion that the rejection of women-friendly bills was because men sought to prove their strength. Nigerian politicians do not care who their opponents are. No less than 3 indomitable Senators: Daisy Danjuma, Ita Giwa and Grace Bent would readily testify to this.  

It is only a coincidence that the opponents in this instant case of gender equality are women. Our male politicians would have rejected any bill in favour of male opponents with greater ferocity because for them, politics is a zero-sum game in which the end justifies the means. Thus, a veritable strategy of the average politician is to overwhelm opponents even if such opponents are his immediate family members. In present day Nigeria, where women emancipation is gaining grounds by the day, the fear is real that if care is not taken, the opportunities for electoral victories would narrow down to the detriment of those who want to be elected perpetually. So, our women need to note that what is playing out now is not necessarily male prejudice but greed.

Under the circumstance, women leaders and activists must re-strategize and reorder a step by step design for achieving success. In this regard, putting women in power which is the step they have quickly reached is ordinarily towards the tail end of the ladder as the predominant literature on the subject portrays. The rapid arrival at this latter step without consummating the earlier steps is a grave error. It was wrong to rely on lobbying legislators. The group to deal with first and foremost is women. Massive mobilization of women, that is, majority of women must be done to the extent in which almost every woman becomes a convert. 

It has to follow the pattern in which the subject attains an appreciable consensus akin to how the entire nation stood against political experts in rigging that they gave up the fight against the electronic transmission of results.  It was not that they were unaware of the merits of the use of electoral technologies, it was simply because it would hinder their rigging prowess that they shut it down along with its acclaimed merits.

Certainly, the number of women who are committed to the struggle for gender equality has increased but still not enough. For example, whereas 230 women groups were reportedly battle-ready to shut the National Assembly if the women-friendly bills were rejected, only 50 women groups according to media reports surfaced after the rejection.  In addition, many of the groups had not sufficiently assimilated the demands of women which should have been drummed at rallies, town halls and anywhere whatsoever. 

Again, women must be specific, aggressive and consistent about their requests. If majority of women demonstrate their preparedness to vote for only female candidates or male governors with female deputies and stretch it to all party positions and all elective offices, the lobbying will reverse to political party leaders lobbying women groups. Only 3 days ago Governor Wike of Rivers on national television intuitively asked Nigerian women to embrace PDP as it was the APC-led legislature that short-changed them  

Aisha Buhari and Dolapo Osinbajo assisted by Bisi Fayemi, Betsy Obaseki, Pauline Tallen etc. needn’t visit any Assembly. What they needed to do was to mobilize their husbands and others in the executive branch to convert some if not all the bills into executive bills. After all, our Senate President had declared at the beginning of the 9th Assembly that anything endorsed by President Buhari’s government would be passed by the Assembly. However, whereas Buhari may support zoning of seats to women per state, he is not likely to support an increase in our over-bloated Assembly. But no one is left in doubt that women have the support of the executive. Barely 24 hours after the legislature abandoned them, the federal executive council rolled out a revised gender policy which reportedly spelt-out minimum standards Nigerian government would meet in its mandate for gender equality, good governance accountability and being socially responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups.  The beauty of the new policy is its catch phrase: ‘leave no one behind.’ 

One comedian said a few days ago that Nigerian women knowing that the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Idris Wase would preside, more so as Speaker Gbajabiamila was one of the bill sponsors should have visited only Wase to get his personal commitment. The comedian stated that one if not all the bills would have passed because at the end of voting, Wase would have just declared that the side he favours “has it” no matter how loudly the other side shouts. Of course, this may be a joke coming from a comedian but the lesson is that what wins a struggle is what needs to be patronized not emotions or assumptions.