Women’s human rights should be respected – Mahdi

Hajiya Saudatu Shehu Mahdi, a women’s rights activist, is the Secretary General and Programme Director for Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA). An indigene of Katsina state, she has been married for 35 years and is blessed with children and grandchildren. In this interview with ENE OSANG, she harps on the need for women’s rights to be respected in Nigeria

Would you say women’s rights in Nigeria are protected?
When you talk about protection of women’s rights, women’s rights is a whole quantum of issues just like human rights. What we should be asking is whether we are beginning to respond to the needs that women’s human rights, their contribution and political participation are essential for Nigeria’s development. If that is the question, I would say we are beginning to realise as a nation and respond to that need that women must be taken on board, must make contributions and that this country will be better off if both men and women work to ensure Nigeria’s growth and well-being.

Particularly for those who may not understand, what are those women’s rights?
Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are defined as the fundamental human rights to social and political life, and the rights that accrue to us in our environment. These include all the rights included in chapter four of the 1999 constitution and the rights included in international treaties in which Nigeria is signatory. Most importantly, where we are worried is the right to life for women in terms of maternal health, access to reproductive health rights, rights to education, political participation, economic wellbeing and participation; the computation of our aggregate contributions to the economy, just like the coordinating minister is talking about rebasing the economy. In doing this, half the contributions of women as mothers, housewives, should be taken into consideration, because when your wife is not working because she is taking care of your children or something else you think she should be doing to contribute to the family, there should be compensation as a nominal income or expenditure so that it begins to show that even the woman considered not doing any work in the house is actually working. It is important to look at all the rights like right to own land. Women are biggest tillers of land, but we don’t own land, there are communities in Nigeria and Africa as a whole that women cannot own land; that is inhuman and it is not right. If land accrues to her because she bought it or inherited it from her father or husband, she should have that title, but there are communities that deny such rights. These rights are many and women should enjoy it like the men and that is why we are saying Nigeria’s constitution should be for and by the people of Nigeria, everybody including those who live and earn the citizenship of Nigeria.
In that regard we are saying the constitution’s language has been misunderstood, because some people think some of the rights in the constitution is for men only. For example, being the president of the country is assumed to be a man’s position. If our psyche has not understood that ‘he’ also covers ‘she,’ then we should speak to our people in that language that describes ‘he’ as ‘he’ and ‘she.’

What is your assessment of the protection of women’s rights in Nigeria?
We have moved from a point of denial to that of recognition and we are gradually moving to a point of support and response. There is no sensitisation about these rights and even when you begin to make a case for them, people begin to ask you what different rights women have. Yes, women have the same rights as the men, but there are other rights accrued majorly to women like reproductive health rights. When she is denied this right by her husband or mother-in-law, her right to life is endangered. Her right to free movement, wellbeing is infringed upon, so the action of people in the perspective of rights is what we are in denial of. There is now a deliberate sensitisation of people to understand those rights and there is also a deliberate move to enforce those rights. Overall we are doing well; maybe the speed at which we are moving is what we need to make faster. The institutions of government, society and individual family heads and members need to do more and put mechanisms in place that ensure its implementation.

How does WRAPA affect the lives of women individually?
On a daily and even hourly basis, WRAPA affects the life of one Nigerian woman. We offer direct support to women by listening to them when they tell us their problems and ask for assistance. So long as what they are asking for is within the mandate of our work and we can see that she was treated the way she said was only because she is a woman, we help out. If it is a contractual agreement and somebody maltreats her or denigrates from the agreement in the title, we will not look at the issue because she is a woman, but based on the contractual terms. But if she is in a place and she is deprived of something because she is a woman then we will say that is clear discrimination. When a woman comes to report an issue to us, we follow up based on what it is about, but fundamentally we also give fair hearing to the person or institution she complained about.

Why is there foot-dragging in full domestication of these laws?
There is foot dragging because we are coming from a perspective where patriarchy is the order of the day. Even in some homes now, the daughter may like to play football but the mother will ask her to leave the son to play football and the girl should be in the kitchen. We come from a long history of socialisation where women and men cannot do things together and for that reason the foot-dragging will continue.

Don’t you think all these rights’ issues change the law of nature?
The only law of nature we know is that women will get pregnant and give birth, but men cannot and that is the only natural law that we cannot change. And women are also the best care givers and they have the compassion to nurture human beings.

What is WRAPA doing to take basic education to the grassroots?
For us in WRAPA, education is a non-negotiable. We do a lot of social advocacy in terms of sensitizing communities on the inherent benefit in the education of a woman starting from herself as a human being. The life quality and time of an educated woman is different from that of an uneducated woman. WRAPA, other women organisations and the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs’ quest is education and to that end we advocate against the removal of girls from school and advocate for the enrollment, retention and career prospects of girls in schools. To that extent, we advocate with husbands to allow their wives continue their education if for any reason they have been stopped. Also, we have struggled within the child rights law in Nigeria that if any girl drops out from school there is need for her to continue.

How would you describe girl-child education in Nigeria?
Right now, there are policies that government has put in place. There are efforts that NGO and development partners are working on, but even at that there is still a wide disparity between girls and boys in the figures of enrolment in school, retention and career process. Even where there is a parity of admission, you find out that the upkeep or provision is lower for the girl-child than it is. Generally, upkeep is on a 70 to 30 percent and on the level of retention, the young girls tend to withdraw.

How can these problems be solved?
In terms of facility, the schools need to be located at reasonable distances within the community. If the school is far there is tendency that the girl will be at risk either being waylaid on her way from school or from where she went to fetch water. They use a lot of their time because everything is far from her so at the end of the day’s chore’s she doesn’t even have the time to look after herself and be the beautiful bride her husband wants her to be amongst many other things. Today many children are not children. They come back from school to meet a lesson teacher and from there to Quoranic school. When they come back they do homework, eat dinner and its bedtime – that is for the privileged. For the less privileged they have to fetch water or hawk or cook. So what kind of help does she get to enable her be a successful pupil. Also what support does she have in terms of career choices? When we talk about these rights people think it’s something from mars but these are practical and you can apply it to every aspect of your life. All we need is understanding and that is part of the challenges we are talking about. As civil society activists we must reconstruct the English of rights into the daily lives of people so they can understand and begin to appreciate that what we are saying is not big English of Europe but English of day to day living.

How do you manage work and the home front?
The first thing to do is to negotiate your time. One thing I’m happy about is that all through my career I have been able to give quality time to my family. When a woman is not working and she is in the house sleeping all day, because she has house helps or she is busy on the telephone gossiping with friends or moving from one party to the other, that is not quality time. But I am out there and conscious of the fact that I will give some time to my family. I am passionate about whatever I do; I am passionate about having a balanced family and about my work. It is very tough, but with God on my side and my very supportive husband and father who believed in me, I am trying to be a balanced person.

How would you advise women who find it difficult to balance their lives?
I wouldn’t say some women find it difficult to balance because everybody is different. My circumstance might not be the ideal one, even though I had opportunity to be educated which others do not have, so I wouldn’t want to judge anybody. Secondly, many of us say ‘my husband supports me,’ but we say it only to be politically correct. It is not that my husband cannot abuse me, but I negotiated it and negotiation does not only mean talking but I do good and when you do good the obligation around others to you is also to do good to you. For any husband who feels it has to be his wife who must do good always, that man is only being selfish and unjust. So for those women who find it difficult, it’s about their circumstance and that is why we keep saying women must support each other. Our men need to understand that sharing and caring is not about naira and kobo; they should allow their wives to at least associate with others outside so as to get the exposure they need.

Do you have any regrets in life?
Everybody has one, but what I regret in life is that I did not start this work early enough. I would have wanted a situation where activism for me begins from the home. And until socialisation begins from the home, a lot of people don’t see these things as something natural, they see it as something you brought from school and a white man has paid you to embarrass your husband, community or religion. Human dignity is a natural endowment from God himself and nobody has the right to deprive you of it. When one is deprived of human dignity everything falls out of place. My second regret is being unable to communicate with people what rights mean. Until we are able to get the government and institutions of faith and culture to be on our side, our progress will be slow.

What are your achievements in life?
I have four granddaughters, a healthy marriage, a career that has culminated into where I am today and I feel great that every day of my life, especially since 1999 I took up this job, I have impacted the life of human beings, particularly the vulnerable Nigerian women.