Despite several conversations on more women’s participation in Nigerian politics—before and after the 2023 elections—the debate is still on for more women to be included in Nigeria’s political leadership. Let’s show you how bad things are.
Out of 1,553 women who contested for various political seats across the federal and state levels in the 2023 elections, only 72 were elected. 1,487 of these women lost.
Only 17 women were voted into power in the 2023 parliamentary elections, with three and 14 women entering the Senate and House of Representatives, respectively. And only seven were elected as deputy governors of their states. No woman became governor. And as we all know, a woman is not our current president.
Now that we understand how bad things were in the 2023 elections, how can we ensure that the same events don’t repeat themselves in 2027? Well, ladies, the ElectHER Policy and Research Centre (EPRC) has the answer for you.
The movement to get women involved in politics by ElectHER is called the Roadmap to Proactively Advance Gender Equity in Political Leadership in Nigeria.
What will this do?
This roadmap was designed to help push establishing a gender quota into law. Gender quotas imply that women must have a certain number or percentage in their nation’s parliament. For ElectHer, the percentage average they aim for is 22.5% representation by 2027.
But how will this happen?
This will be done through five main objectives:
- Facilitate women’s inclusion in political hierarchy and adoption as party candidates by at least 35% in the 2027 elections.
- Improve, control, and reduce the narrative of negative media stereotyping for women in Nigerian politics by at least 60% before 2027.
- Control and minimise the impact of cultural and religious norms on politically exposed women in Nigeria.
- Building institutions to encourage female candidacy for posts and make political participation attractive for women.
- Strengthen the woman’s capacity to generate enough income and resources for campaigns.
These objectives are further broken down into short-term, medium-term and long-term actions.
Facilitate women’s inclusion in political hierarchy and adoption as party candidates by 35%
ElectHER plans to do this through the following actions:
- Aggressively sensitise women to participate in local/grassroots politics.
- Lobby for women to be part of transition committees for both the president and state governor-elect. This is to ensure the presence of more women in appointment/ministerial positions.
- Introduction of gender bills for reservation of seats for women in political parties.
- Increase advocacy for affirmative action to become law.
- Reservation of at least 20-35% seats for female political appointees at the state and federal levels.
- The long-term goal is to develop and implement long-term capacity for identified female candidates. This will include mentorship programmes and tutorship in managing campaigns and fundraising.
Reduce the negative media stereotyping of women in Nigerian politics by at least 60%
- Work with key stakeholders to review media content, language, and representation that reinforce discrimination against women.
- Create more media content that promotes equity in governance through spotlights, profiling, and storytelling.
- Develop strategic partnerships with media in the design and dissemination of media information.
- Utilise entertainment and lifestyle media tools to reorient the public on the importance of women’s participation.
Objective 3: Minimise the impact of cultural and religious norms on politically exposed women in Nigeria
- Visit key traditional and religious leaders to encourage inclusive participation of women at all levels of governance.
- Facilitate national dialogue to address cultural and religious practices.
- Advocate for full implementation of the National Gender Policy in Nigeria, which seeks to establish full gender equality for women.
- Incorporate gender equity when drafting bills and making policies.
- Co-create, design, and implement interventions that address socio-cultural norms that harm or subjugate women, especially in cases of gender-based electoral violence.
- Leverage technology to build strong communities that include Nigerians in the diaspora.
Building institutions to encourage female candidacy for posts and make political participation attractive for women.
- Reintroduce the “Reserved Seat Bill”, a temporary measure for reserving a minimum number of seats for historically underrepresented groups. Consult with male senators who rejected the bill to find out why it was rejected and how it can be improved.
- Call on influential men, media, private sector, and citizens to support the Reserved Seat Bill.
- Review internal rules and procedures of Federal and State legislatures to encourage more inclusive participation.
- Collaborate and establish relationships with key national learning and training institutions (e.g., the National Institute of Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS)) to ensure that gender equity conversations are included in every aspect of operations.
Strengthen the woman’s capacity to generate enough income and resources for campaigns.
- Focus on putting women out there, either with storytelling, visibility, networking, manifesto development, etc., to attract crowdfunding.
- Improve involvement of individuals and women-led organisations with top female executives to mobilise resources for women with a proven track record ahead of the 2027 elections.
- Have inter-generational knowledge-sharing sessions to ensure that women interested in politics can learn from older women with experience.
- Establish a fundraising network for female candidates.
Benefits of the Roadmap
You now know the roadmap’s contents, so what are the benefits? Here are five of them:
- Increased collaboration with all stakeholders.
- Build gender-responsive reforms in government.
- An establishment of the gender quota.
- Improved media messaging towards women.
- Amplifying women’s voices.
