Campaign to elect female lawmakers fails in Lagos, nationwide

By Rasaq Adebayo with Ladapo Kolade

With just only three out of the 40 members that will constitute the 10th Lagos State House of Assembly, gender activists are wondering why they ended up with such a meagre number of elected women lawmakers despite their efforts.
In the elections into the House of Assembly held March 18, 2023, Lagosians re-elected Hon. Mojisola Meranda (Apapa constituency 1-APC) and Hon. Mosunmola Sangodara (Surulere Constituency II-APC). Same day, voters in Amuwo-Odofin constituency elected Labour Party candidate, Hon. Fokuke Osafile. She succeeds Hon. (Mrs.) Mojisola Ali-Macaulay of APC.

This number of elected female lawmakers is considered too low in attaining the 35 percent affirmative action as prescribed by the National Gender Policy (NGP). It also excludes women from being part of the governance process in the state despite making up almost half of the population.
No fewer than 14,100,000 of Lagos’30 million estimated population are females. Of its 7,06, 195 registered voters, about 3,367,828, an estimated 47.5 percent average reported by INEC, are women.

Prior to the polls, there were high hopes that the 2023 elections would mark a higher point in the election of women.
Women, particularly in the Western region, which included most parts of Lagos, began voting as early as 1959. They were joined by their northern counterparts in 1979.
Since the return of democracy, efforts to put more women in power have not met targets.
A study by Oluyemisi Oloyede of the National Bureau of Statistics noted that Nigerians elected three women out of 106 senators in 1999, seven in 2011 and only eight to the Upper Chamber in 2015.
The figures for the 360-member House of Representatives are not significantly better. These include 12 in 1999, 21 in 2003, 23 in 2007, 26 on 2011 and 19 in 2015.
Elor Ukereuwem, reviewing the performance of women in the 2023 polls in a study under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation, listed four major hurdles faced by 1,544 women candidates.

According to her: “The number of women in Nigeria’s National Assembly has fallen by 19 percent compared to the last assembly, with women now occupying 3 percent of seats in the Senate and 4 percent in the House of Representatives.1

To understand why Nigerian women performed so poorly in the recent elections, the 2022 primary elections provided insight into the challenges and barriers faced by women aspirants and candidates. The results of the various parties’ primary elections highlight enduring limitations to women’s representation in competitive politics in Nigeria…four main factors contributed to high attrition rates for women during party primaries: political party gatekeeping; conservative norms and culture; the variation of competitiveness in executive versus legislative offices; and the combined effect of novice candidature (large number of political newcomers) and low persistence (staying power) of women candidates who lose elections.”

It was gathered that out of the 1,019 females who contested in the Nigerian 2023 State Houses of Assembly elections, only 48 won. This amounts to 4.7 percent of women across the country.

Compared with the 2019 election where 45 women were elected into the state legislatures, the number of females elected into the state parliaments in the 2023 election increased by three. Nevertheless, it is still far below proper representation.

This is far from the expectations of the global human rights community that defined support for women candidates in the elections as priority and offered grants in dollars to put their money in it.
For instance, on May 24, 2022, the UN Women offered grants to promote women participation as candidates in Ekiti State.
On a larger scale, Women in Successful Csreers, WISCAR, founded by corporate lawyer, Amina Oyagbola encouraged many women seeking public office across party lines to pitch and funded successful ones.
One of them, Joyce Daniels, acknowledged the funds helped her campaign.
As early as 2018, another, non-profit, Emerge Women, began training potential women candidates. Its founder, Mary Ikoku said EW would increase the number of women in elective and appointive offices.

According to available data, a total of 10,240 candidates contested for the 990 state houses of assembly seats across the 36 states. Of these contestants, 9,221 were male, while 1,019 were female.

The outcome of the state legislative elections shows that only 48 females emerged winners out of the 1,019 that contested, representing only 4.7 percent of the total.

This represents less than a 1 percent increase when compared with the number of female lawmakers elected into the outgoing state assemblies.

In the 2019 election, female representation in the 36 states’ houses of assembly members was only 4.41 percent.

A breakdown of the 48 females elected into the state legislatures in 2023 by states showed that Ekiti State had the highest number. Out of the 26 seats in the state’s House of Assembly, six will be occupied by women. In 2019, only four females were elected into the Ekiti State House of Assembly. Could this have come from the UN for Women grant? The answer is, at best, a guess.

Kwara and Akwa Ibom States were next with the number of elected female lawmakers in 2023. The two states have five and four females in their state houses respectively.

In the state’s outgoing assembly, Akwa Ibom has only two female lawmakers out of the 26 seats in the state. This has now increased to four.

Surprisingly, Kwara State, with the second highest number of female elected lawmakers in the just concluded state house of assembly election, had no female lawmaker in its state’s parliament in 2019.
As in Lagos State, only three females were elected in Ondo State.

According to data from Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), 15 states do not have a single female elected lawmaker in the just concluded state houses of assembly elections.

Out of the seven states in the North-West region, all except Kaduna State will be male-dominated houses of assembly. Kaduna State has two elected female lawmakers this year. In 2019, it had none.

Some social and political analysts in Lagos said the majority of the females in the State have more interest in supporting the males in politics rather than being in the forefront themselves.

They noted that the females constitute those who drum support for their male counterparts, adding that many of them are scared to face the rigour of election.

Apart from that, experts highlight high costs, poor media coverage, and others as barriers to female participation in politics.

Damilola Agbalojobi, a political scientist and gender specialist, attributes the high cost of politics, poor media coverage of female candidates, and societal factors such as cultural or religious norms surrounding issues like marriage and the burden of care as some of the factors affecting women participation in politics in Nigeria.

According to the gender uh specialist, oftentimes, women do not have enough money to pay for the mandatory expression of interest and nomination forms required by political parties to run for positions on their platforms. Not to mention the huge cost required to run an election campaign.

She explained that the poor access of women to education means poor access to gainful employment which makes it more difficult for them to follow through the process of getting leadership positions.

Meanwhile, a new female Lagos State House of Assembly member who was elected under the platform of Labour Party representing Amuwo-Odofin Constituency I, Hon. Foluke Osafile, pledged to pursue gender-based Bills at the parliament to attain 35 percent female participation in politics.

“In terms of gender-based legislation, the 35 percent derivation is not yet met, even when the president has talked about equal representation. We are supposed to be about 20 in the House but we may be four. We shall get there. We will continue to emphasise on the implementation of any Bill gender-based legislation. As a female legislator, right from my State here, I will continue to fight for the signing of those Bills,” she said.

Answering a question on whether she and her counterpart from Labour Party being the only two opposition party members in the House may consider decamping to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as insinuated by the public, Osafile said people must be enlightened that the law does not permit any elected politician to defect from their party to another party.

“A lot of people keep asking this question because they are not enlightened about the new electoral law. The media should enlighten Nigerians about the new electoral law that with the law if you decamp, you are as well leave the party through which you are elected. Let the media enlighten people that the norm has been changed.

“The people should also be enlightened over the function of the lawmakers so that they don’t hold them responsible for the rehabilitation of roads, provision of infrastructure, and all that. For me, my constituents should expect good representation and we are working together with the local council chairman to bring down the dividends of democracy to our people right from the federal level.”

Speaking on how lawmakers lobby to get things from the House, especially for their constituencies, she said it requires negotiation.

“That appears to be the norm and I want to say this is where the power of negotiation comes in when there is a will, there will be a way out. We are not there for personal gain, I know the challenge will be there but we take one thing at a time. Irrespective of your party, we are all working for Lagos State but it is just that we all must come through a party and I want to believe it will remain so.”
The problem of low women representstion has led to calls for a more democratic electoral system such as proportional representation.b
Echonews publisher and political consultant, Kehinde Bamigbetan told Echonews that the best way to execute the 35 percent affirmative action is to make law requiring parties to allocate certain number of seats to women based on the proportion of their population.
” It means women from different parties will contest against each other in those constituencies and one of them will win.”