2023: Are the women really coming?

I find myself of recent thinking of one of my favourite movies, the 2006 Martin Scorsese’s multiple-Oscar winning film, The Departed, which opens with one of the film’s stars, Jack Nicholson, delivering an expletive and racial slur-laced monologue.

“Twenty years after the Irishman couldn’t get a f****** job, we had the presidency…” Nicholson’s character says to the tune of The Rolling Stone’s Gimme Shelter in the background. “If I have anything against the black chappies, it’s this: no one gives it to ya. You have to take it.”

• Reps move to regulate Nigeria’s participation in peacekeeping operations
• Fuel crisis: Buhari apologises to Nigerians, orders clampdown on saboteurs

Ahead of the 2023 elections in Nigeria, the jostling for relevance by different groups is becoming more prominent, fascinating to watch but mostly just annoying and repetitive. Marginalised and peripheral groups are canvassing for relevance, pushing through candidates for elective offices. One group that should neither be marginalised nor peripheral is the women, which the World Population Clock says constitutes 49.4 per cent of Nigeria’s population.

Still, with this significant population, the closest a woman came to be a governor was in 2015 when Hajiya Aisha Jummai Alhassan or Mama Taraba as she was known, forced a re-run in the governorship elections of Taraba State. She did not mount a strong enough challenge in 2019 and sadly passed away at 61 only last year, her dreams unfulfilled.

The relationship between women and Nigerian politics has always been complex. They are often used to mobilise and support male candidates and then compensated with women’s leadership positions. That is mostly that. Except in the curious case of Ameer Sarkee, who decided that a man should vie for the position of the APC National Women leader and threw his hat amongst the veils and headscarves.

Yet, anytime a woman aspires beyond the women leader’s role, a staggering torrent of factors come into play that often frustrates her dreams, not because of competence but because of her gender. This was something women like Ayisha Osori who, spurred by the Not-Too-Young-To-Run act, contested for a seat in the National Assembly and was thrown off by the dirtiness of the game and how just impossibly expensive politics is. She lost and went home to write an instructive book, Love Does Not Win Elections, which all fringe politicians will do well to read.

Yet as the ruling APC for instance holds its convention next week, it is the words of Nicholson’s character in The Departed that plays in my mind because if women and youth—and sometimes they are quite the same— want any relevance, they need to be more proactive and reach out and “take it.”

In the olden days, it would have served to find a cudgel and well…clubber someone on the head and take it. But this is 21st-century democracy and the only legitimate path to power is to win it through the ballot. For women and youth, since they have the numbers, this should be easy, right?

Yet, with 75 per cent of the population being under 35, bizarrely, the PDP in 2012 elected a 60-year-old man to be its National Youth Leader. Unbelievable! It would take the party losing power and significant relevance for them to swing the other way and in 2021, elect a 25-year-old into that position.

And what about the women?

Hasn’t it always been remarkable that serial presidential aspirant Sarah Jibril ended up with only one vote in the 2011 PDP primaries? In a subsequent interview, she would say that that one vote will continue to haunt Nigerian women. That is both the problem and the solution.

In the build-up to 2023, affirmative action, which in principle assures women of 35 per cent participation in government, which politicians have often promised but regularly failed to deliver on, is being presented as a ticket to allow women a seat at the table, sort of a permission-granting document.

Affirmative action should only be valid in giving women, a hugely disadvantaged demography, equal access to political opportunities and ensuring that hurdles are not set against them because of their gender and societal-prescribed gender roles. A woman should not be voted into office or given a free pass simply because she is a woman as if she is a charity case. But because of the historically gendered disadvantages—lower levels of education and access to wealth and opportunities—deliberate efforts should be made to even the platform for them and guarantee that gender and gender roles should never strangle a woman’s ambitions if she has the requisite competence and skills.

Imagine, therefore, my surprise when Rinsola Abiola, yes, daughter of the late MKO Abiola, announced her desire to run for the National Youth Leader of the APC and it came to light that  (a) it was made to seem like an aberration that a woman is aspiring to that post, which has always been occupied by men and (b) there has in fact never been a woman occupying the post because the political lexicon has always defined youth in terms of being a young male. For some, it seems that being a woman and a youth are two entirely parallel things.

The question is not if she is qualified for the post, which I do think she is—not because she is her father’s daughter, but because she has been involved in youth advocacy and politics within the APC for years, and has undergone leadership training in several reputable international programmes, but the shock seems to be that she is a woman aspiring to a be a youth leader as if it was a whale aspiring to fly.

In the end, the APC will do what the APC will do and while not a fan of advocating for people to be voted based on their gender or tribe, I advocate people being given a fair chance. While candidates must in their campaigns project their qualities and manifestoes convincingly instead of, again, their gender or tribe, it would be fascinating for there finally to be a woman discarding the stereotype and emerging a youth leader in a party. If a 60-year-old man qualifies as a youth leader, I don’t see why a promising thirty-something-year old competent young woman shouldn’t.

Today, quite a few women have offered themselves to serve in electoral positions. One of the most striking is 102-year-old Nonye Josephine Ezeanyaeche, who in February, declared her intentions to run for president.

Similarly, Khadijah Okunnu-Lamidi, 38, has declared her intention to run for president. A left-field option by all considerations but one without a solid political base.

While most young people would advocate a burn-it all approach to politics by discarding the old order and starting a new one, the reality is that the path to power in Nigeria is guarded by this old older.

Okunnu-Lamidi may vie for president under some small, obscure party and feature on the ballot paper, but for there to be meaningful change, marginalised demographics, like women and youth, would need to create this change from within the body of larger political parties.

While the Mama Tarabas have exited the scene with dreams unfulfilled, the likes of Senator Aisha Binani, who recently declared for governor of Adamawa State, have stepped forward. If these women can sell their candidacy, not just their gender as if it is enough qualification, as competent individuals with clear plans for elected offices, and can win over the support of their constituencies and get the women and men to genuinely buy into their ideas, it would be a disservice that the unfavourable terrains of partisan politics should maintain the obstacles that lay in their paths—obstacles that often have to do with their gender.

It is important at this point to remind political parties of the 35 per cent affirmative action that will guarantee a historically marginalised gender a fair chance to participate. And if parties like the APC and the PDP will create an inclusive party structure, it would be great to give the likes of the Binani, the Okunnu-Lamidi and the Rinsola Abiola a fair platform from which to participate. Taking it would be up to them but on equitable grounds.