Cassam Uteem, former President of Mauritius and member of the Club of Madrid, led the second African Women Leaders Project’s mission to Nigeria on 18-22 February, 2008, co-organized in partnership with Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA).

The delegation was supported by former Member of the Kenyan Parliament and Shadow Minister for Education Prof. Ruth Oniang’o, and Policy and Content Consultant for Club of Madrid’s Shared Societies Project Clem McCartney as international expert practitioners. Prof. Mrs. Jadesola Akande, Nigerian constitutional lawyer and women’s rights activist, supported the delegation.

The mission aimed at fostering dialogues and sharing experiences that will secure concrete commitments by the electoral bodies and political parties to provide specific support to women leaders and a level playing field for women’s political participation and access to political party leadership.

The visit began with a briefing from members of the Electoral Reform Network, a civil society coalition working on the submission of civil society views to the electoral reform process. The Club of Madrid-WRAPA delegation commended the network for coming together as one voice to look into the issues. The delegation emphasized that civil society is the voice of conscience that keeps leadership in check and must therefore check actions at different levels and advocate, along with the media, for change in mentality in society, with political parties and the Electoral Reform Committee.

The delegation also met with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof. Maurice Iwu, and his Commissioners. The members of the delegation discussed a broad range of issues concerning the importance of women’s participation in politics and governance and sought to understand the role of INEC in reforming the electoral process to ensure greater inclusion of women and other excluded groups. The Chairman of INEC agreed that the electoral process was largely unfair to women in Nigeria and that INEC has indeed identified key issues that work against women’s political participation such as gender inequality, violence, excessive influence of money in politics and negative public perceptions of women in politics. He informed the delegation that INEC is committed to addressing these issues and is ready to support initiatives that could amend the situation.

Prof. Iwu was encouraged by the dialogue created at the meeting and invited the Club of Madrid and WRAPA to partner with INEC to support the reform process, by providing specific and practical suggestions on tools to further include women and other disadvantaged groups in electoral processes. He promised on his side to fully scrutinise INEC’s legal provision attempting to identify areas that could be used as entry to positive reforms. He further committed INEC to sponsor legislative initiatives on the electoral process through private member bills. 

The Chairman of the Electoral Reform Committee (ERC), Hon. Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais, explained that the recommendations of the Committee will be based on views of the people of Nigeria and noted that, although the Terms of Reference of the ERC had no specific reference to women as a group, they were broad enough to accommodate any reform including proportional representation and other measures to facilitate greater women’s participation in politics. The Committee acknowledged the existing gap in the Constitution and electoral laws in enhancing the participation of women in politics and was concerned that women’s groups had not yet made their submissions to the process. The Chairman called on WRAPA and other women’s groups to submit their proposals.

The ERC asked the Club of Madrid to submit a memorandum on electoral system design, including specific tools for improving women’s participation in electoral processes. The Chairman promised to have his committee thoroughly examine such structures to see how Nigeria could benefit from them. President Uteem offered the resource base of the Club of Madrid in supporting the Committee with this initiative that gives a great opportunity to Nigerians to contribute to the reform of their electoral process.

During the mission, the Club of Madrid-WRAPA delegation met with leaders of the main political parties in Nigeria. Pres. Uteem stressed that “no political parties can exist without internal democracies and no democracy is complete without women” and urged the political parties to work further in achieving the goals of the Beijing Platform for Action. Political party leaders acknowledged the importance for women to be included within political party leadership structures. After an animated discussion, they accepted that Nigeria has a large number of credible women who can hold leadership positions within the parties, but that the political culture impedes the advancement of women especially due to campaign finance needs, late night meetings, and political violence. Mr. McCartney urged the political leaders to examine the cultural obstacles which hinder women’s participation in politics and encouraged the parties to review their internal systems to accommodate both women and men in the leadership. Pres. Uteem highlighted the need for change in the mentality of the parties for equal partnership. Prof. Oniang’o made a passionate appeal to political leaders to respect and provide space for women within party leadership pointing out that such a move would in fact greatly enhance the image of any party pursuing such a line.

The delegation travelled to Lagos State, where they met with the Deputy Governor, Princess Sarah Adebisi Sosan. During an interactive discussion with her and other senior female politicians of the State, the Deputy Governor said that Lagos State had a high number of women leaders including the Deputy Speaker, the Chief Whip, the Secretary to the State Government, as well as some Commissioners and Permanent Secretaries. The Deputy Governor attributed the increase in the number of women participating in leadership to the strong support the State had received from both the former and current State Governors both of whom are men. She agreed that, although the State had not reached the 30% affirmative action requirement, the Governor is committed to support the increase of women participation in leadership.

^{[back to top]}