Nigeria’s Constitution Review Makes Women’s Inclusion a Priority

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Abu­ja, Nige­ria — Nige­ri­a’s con­sti­tu­tion is get­ting a revamp, and this time a com­mit­tee tasked with the respon­si­bil­i­ty says wom­en’s inclu­sion in polit­i­cal offices is a priority.

Women hold a tiny frac­tion of the seats in Nigeria’s Nation­al Assem­bly. Three of the 109 sen­a­tors and 15 of the 360 mem­bers in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives are female.

The chair of the House con­sti­tu­tion review com­mit­tee, Ben­jamin Kalu, spoke this week dur­ing a dia­logue with women-cen­tered and pro-democ­ra­cy groups ahead of Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day on Friday.

Kalu said the ongo­ing review of the con­sti­tu­tion will address gen­der imbal­ance in Nige­ri­a’s pol­i­tics. He also said the 10th Nation­al Assem­bly will revis­it gen­der bills that failed to progress dur­ing the pre­vi­ous administration.

In 2022, Niger­ian women advo­cat­ed for five bills to pro­mote inclu­sion and women’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion in par­lia­ment — includ­ing one bill that would reserve 35% of polit­i­cal seats for women.

None of bills received enough sup­port to win pas­sage in the male-dom­i­nat­ed par­lia­ment, lead­ing to protests.

Cyn­thia Mba­malu, a pro­gram direc­tor at YIAGA Africa, one of the groups advo­cat­ing for gen­der bills, said struc­tur­al chal­lenges, patri­ar­chal norms and biased sys­tems put lim­its on women who want to run for office.

“The num­bers are still poor,” she said. “We still have 11 or so state assem­blies where there are no women, and some of those states have not had a female leg­is­la­tor since 1999, when we [tran­si­tioned] to democ­ra­cy. As long as we don’t have [a] con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date that opens up the space to increase women rep­re­sen­ta­tion, we’ll con­stant­ly strug­gle with a male dom­i­nat­ed Nation­al Assembly.”

Despite Africa record­ing an increase in female polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion in recent years, women’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Niger­ian pol­i­tics is among the low­est in the world, at about 4%.

In last year’s gen­er­al elec­tions, few­er women won seats in office despite an increased num­ber of can­di­dates from var­i­ous polit­i­cal parties.

Mba­malu said law­mak­ers need to take the new con­sti­tu­tion­al review seri­ous­ly for equi­ty and democ­ra­cy to succeed.

“One of the indi­ca­tors to assess our devel­op­ment and the pres­ence of democ­ra­cy is about how inclu­sive your gov­ern­ment is,” she said. “I want to believe that the 10th Assem­bly will act dif­fer­ent­ly — will put its name in history.”

The rec­om­men­da­tions of the con­sti­tu­tion review com­mit­tee will be sub­ject to votes in parliament.