Cathy Latiwa Amato is a gender and inclusivity advisor at the European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES) under the Project Preventing Electoral Violence and Education For Inclusive Democracy (pEV-EDI) in Nigeria, an initiative founded by the Federal Republic of Germany. In this interview with ENE OSANG, she discusses the importance of an all-inclusive government and bares her mind presidential and national assembly polls.
What is ECEC project in Nigeria?
ECES was founded by the Federal Republic of Germany under a project called Preventing Electoral Violence and Education For Inclusive Democracy (pEV-EDI) in Nigeria. We have been here in Nigeria since June 2017.
We will be here till 2022, maybe more, and under this project we are the first international organisation that provides support to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). ECES has five components first to support INEC, the national assembly, CSOs, political parties and the media.
What kind of support do you give INEC, particularly in the build-up to elections?
We are doing electoral technical support by training different departments to work towards the election. We did training in legal, gender, media and technology ICT, etc.
We have been doing many activities funded by the EU; we have done more than 50 activities to support the INEC and under the voter education and gender division we also did several activities to support the INEC, especially to sensitise and educate the people on the need to support women in participating in electoral and political processes.
Why do you think it is important for women to participate?
We think women should participate in electoral process because they are part of the population and election is not just for one segment of the population, everyone should participate in the decision of the country. Women constitute more than half of the population and to help them participate in these processes is to help grow the country’s economy.
In other African countries like Rwanda, South Africa, Ethiopia women are really participating and impacting the economy of the country; so we think women are part of the population, women rights are human rights and so voting is a right women must enjoy in any part of the world. We only have five per cent of women in governance in Nigeria and the European Union I talking to the Nigerian government because it thinks that there is a need that it supports Nigeria in increasing, sensitising and educating the population to have more women in electoral and political processes.
What does the ECES expect in today’s election?
We hope that women will go out in their numbers to vote for their preferential candidates and also support women who are candidates because the more we have qualified women on decision making tables the more they support other women up because they know the issues.
Also for the law, we want the bill to be passed because more women in parliament and senate will help to have more women come out for the next elections. So, we are encouraging women to go out, those who have PVCs should go out to vote for their preferential candidates, especially for the future, because their votes are the voice of the future.
Party primaries dealt a big blow on women candidates; do you think ECES advocacy has made the desired impact?
We think that women do have to give up on any challenges they meet now because it’s still a long process and way to go. That’s why after the elections we will still meet women and talk about the lessons learnt and where to improve on. We are still optimistic that this small movement is a process and we will continue to sensitise and encourage more women.
From the 2015 elections, we have noticed increased number of registration under the INEC, we have gone round the six geopolitical zones of the country holding workshops and encouraging women to register and collect their PVCs, and we are surprised that at least more women are participating. It is a long process and we know that there are more women as voters and candidates participating in the 2019 elections.
Also, we have stakeholders who have been building the capacity of women candidates like the Nigerian Women Trust Fund who have been working round the country training and supporting candidates. So, ECES in collaboration with other stakeholders has worked to have increase of women in politics in Nigeria.
We didn’t stop at national levels, we went to the grassroots. Nigeria is a big country and we can’t be everywhere so we went to few places under the pEV-EDI project.
We went with the association of women in the market from different markets; we mobilised more than 3, 000 people to step down this sensitisation because everyone goes to the market. So, talking to market women is talking to the population. We produced different songs in different languages, jingles to educate the electorates at the grassroots. We reached out a lot to the grassroots through many CSOs at state and national levels.
Few women understand that they need to be part of the system, we have done training and people don’t even know there is a different set of people who are disabled and need special treatment; but in all we recorded much impact.
What the challenges in advocating for women in Nigeria?
There are a lot of challenges in women participation in politics and each country has its peculiar challenge but in Nigeria there are a lot of barriers including cultural, religious, financial barriers.
We have been working with the local traditional and religious rulers through CSOs to encourage, educate them to know the importance of having mothers, sisters, wives not only as voters but as candidates. This was not easy, but collaborators helped us to access in reaching out to communities.
What are the implications of a non-inclusive electoral process and governance?
Democracy as we know is government for the people, by the people, and population is having all the segments including women, elders, IDPs, PWDs, and the youth. So, to have true democracy everybody should participate in governance of a country either as a voter or candidate and be part of decision making.
We think that a few people should not exclude the majority of population who are contributing to the economy. It is very important to have everyone on the decision making tables; that’s why in our advocacy trainings we have the dialogue between the police and PWDs, women and political parties together to find ways of accessibility of each segment of the country to the process.
Do you think Nigeria has achieved 35% affirmative action and are you comfortable with that percentage considering their population in the country?
We need to be equal, if women are more than half of the population and for instance, we have only 20% of women as part of the process, that means it’s not equal. We need everybody according to the demography of a country to be included in the process; so it’s about the demography of the country. In inclusive countries, it’s a call that everybody according to the demography of a country to have equal opportunities.
The political terrain is tough and difficult for women in Nigeria; how do you think they can overcome this challenge?
There is a lot to do; if you read the stories of women in countries like Norway, Sweden, Rwanda, Ethiopia, they faced a lot of challenges too, but they trained themselves, built their capacity and learnt from past mistakes.
So, we need to educate ourselves from zero to the basic of the country not only about the country, but also in international standard because we want women to occupy positions but not just women, qualified ones.
Women need to get informed to be educated to be able to represent the country; we need to continue sensitise even men on the need to have and support women. In other countries, there is a law facilitating the importance of women so once we have a law facilitate this it will go a long way in supporting women to be part of the process.
As an expert, how would you assess gender equality in Nigeria?
We have been here since 2017 and from my personal point of view, things are improving. It has not gotten to international standard yet, but women are getting aware of importance to be part and, of course, gender here is a question of female and male. I think there is much cultural and religious barriers, when we mix the role of the woman to be wife or daughter and not really as human to be part of process, but there is improvement and it’s still a long way to go.
