2023: Nigeria set to produce 1st elected female gov – Tallen

The Minister of Women Affairs, Dame Paulyn Tallen, has stated that “Nigeria is set to produce the first elected female governor at the governorship election to be held on March 11, this year.

She said the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in Adamawa state, Senator Aishatu Ahmad, popularly known as Binani, would emerge the next governor of the state.

Speaking on Friday at the Launch of the Roadmap to Advance Gender Equity in Political Leadership in Nigeria, the minister, through her representative, said “the roadmap would help to achieve the 35 per cent affirmative action.”

While presenting a paper, Roadmap to Advance Gender Equity in Leadership in Nigeria, the chief executive officer of a civil society organisation, ElectHER, Ibijoke Faborede, said “in the overall, the national average for women participation has hovered around six per cent for elective and appointive offices, which is far below the West African sub-regional average of 15 per cent.”

“The low progress made in women’s political representation in Nigeria is a  surprising phenomenon to many observers who believe the country has a policy framework that would appear to support equity in participation,” she said.

According to her, ElectHER through the implementation of this roadmap will push for the institutionalisation of the gender quota towards achieving the regional average of 22.5per cent representation by 2027.

To do this, the group said it would lobby for more women in the transition committees of both the president and state governors-elect; embark on aggressive sensitisation of women to participate in local level politics, and increase advocacy for the implementation of affirmative action by the new government.

Other measures, according to Faborede, would be to promote allyship across the political and other spaces, map and provide a database of female technocrats with solid track record across sectors to the new administration, to provide solution driven and result oriented advocacy, amongst others.

In her remarks, the representative of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who is also the deputy director, Department of the Civil Society Organisations, Ndidi Okoafor, said the Commission was committed to the electoral needs of the women and those living with disability.

She said although the men say women don’t support one another she challenged the men to love one another, and expressed the hope that they would get there through the grace of God.

The programme was organised by Women’s Democracy Network under the International Republican Institute (IRI) in partnership with ElectHER.