By Victoria Ojeme

A Nollywood actress an convener of Arise Monalisa Foundation Mrs. Monalisa Chinda has urge Women to rise up towards achieving greatness in their various fields of endeavours.

She made the call in Abuja at an event Tagged Equity Vs Equality aimed at honouring women and men who are doing great things in various vocations.

On the dwindling number of women in politics, Chinda blamed it on the nature and character of politics in Nigeria and Africa, which alienates women. She however, urged women to be more strategic thinking, create more awareness and stop unproductive competition, adding that they can do better through education and research.

“In Africa there is an inherent sickness. The political space is full of constraints that are structured against women, the men must be encouraged to support women to thrive in the political space. Women must be given the chance to participate in reshaping the destiny of the nation and plotting its development in the next political dispensation,” she said.

She explained that Arise Monalisa Foundation had been working towards encouraging young women excelled, urged them to take advantage of every opportunity to achieve their goals.

Also speaking at the conference, a filmmaker and writer, Zik Zulu Okafor, lamented the declining participation of women in politics especially in the legislature where the laws are made to guide governance, describing it as ”a tragedy”. He pointed out that since 1999 only 157 women have been lawmakers at the National Assembly far below the men who number about 2500 since 1999.

He attributed this backwardness to the nature of politics in Nigeria that is replete with violence and voter intimidation and suppression, adding that Nigerian democracy has become a product of poor thinking driven by very less hourable people.

“I believe in parity, I believe in the power of women, I believe that the strong presence of women in our national leadership will mark a major turning point in the progress of our country. Today, we are talking about equity just as the UN SDGs has made gender equity agenda no 5 and that is my passion for women. We cannot have any meaningful development when the voice of women is held back, that is why I speak about parity to lead our country to its manifest destiny.

“I think we are not thinking the right way, that is why we are having poor representation of women. Our democracy is not being practiced in such a way that women can come in because our democracy employs brute force, violence , vote suppression and women don’t have time for that because they are very honorable people.

“Unfortunately in Nigeria we are doing things that have left the women behind and it is a tragedy because Nigeria has women that can change the country, so we need to rework, to rethink, to reconstruct the practice of democracy in Nigeria.

“Women are transformative change agents and they need support to manifest their potential in the area of politics and governance,” he said.

A communications expert Alex Okoroji while speaking to reporters said there are many gaps that women must fill.

“There are many gaps and the way these gaps will be filled is by bringing more women into the discussion. First of all we need to acknowledge the contribution of women in driving society forward. I believe that there are not enough laws to support women and that is an area we need to look at because most of the laws are created by men and most times they don’t understand the issues that women face.

“Women need to support each other because when women stand up to run for elections they are pitched against a system that does not favour them. They face violence and attacks online, pointing to their families and their children and creating scenarios of threat. You realize that fewer women are involved in politics because we have socialized our society to favour men,”she said.