The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, has acted honourably by listening to the voices of dissent, particularly from the women folk, which greeted the passage of five controversial bills on gender equity by the National Assembly on Tuesday, March 1, 2022.
Exactly a week after the legislative fiasco over gender equity during voting on 68 bills in the reviewed Constitution, the House of Representatives tweeted on Tuesday, March 8 that the members would revisit three out of the five controversial bills immediately.
The identified bills for reconsideration are those on citizenship, indigeneship and affirmative action. The bill on reserved seats was left out. The bill on 20 per cent appointive positions for Ministers and Commissioners had already been passed.
Indeed, when both chambers of the National Assembly voted on the 68 harmonised proposed Constitution amendment bills, which will soon be transmitted to the 36 states’ Houses of Assembly for concurrence, four out of the five bills on women equality stood out like a sore thumb.
They were the bills on citizenship, indigeneship, reserved seats and affirmative action. Only the one on 20 per cent for ministerial and commissioner nominees sailed through.
The reaction was immediate. Women groups actively supported by the First Lady, Mrs Aisha Buhari and wife of the Vice President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo, launched an immediate protest against the insensitive and pejorative posture of the lawmakers.
Women groups stormed the National Assembly and laid a siege there, affirming to hold on until their demands for a review of the disputed bills were addressed. Aisha Buhari even wrote a letter to the principal officers of the National Assembly, urging them to listen to the voices of the people and rethink their stand for possible reversal of the passed bills before transmitting the package to the State Houses of Assembly.
That the National Assembly has identified the bills to be revisited shows that they have realised where they goofed.
Against the background of the extant Constitutional provision, which allows a maximum of 20 years for non-indigenes who have resided in any state to contest and be voted for in elections, citizenship and indigeneship are so closely related that to uphold one and deny the other to any compatriot will amount to grave injustice.
The bill on indigeneship, which seeks to alter Section 31 and 38 (1) of the 1999 Constitution to allow a woman to become an indigene of her husband’s state after at least five years of marriage, was voted down by the lawmakers, just as the one on citizenship, which seeks to amend Section 26 of the Constitution that grants a foreign woman married to a Nigerian man the right to become a citizen while a Nigerian woman married to a foreign man cannot enjoy such a right. Both rights are human rights and women cannot be denied such rights under any guise.
Above all, the need to revisit the bill on Affirmative Action bill, which seeks to amend Section 223 of the Constitution, provide for 35 per cent affirmative action to ensure that women occupy at least 35 per cent of party administrative and appointive seats across federal and state offices, is quite in order.
Affirmative action for women has been in the front burner for the past 25 years since the issue on gender equality came up at the World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in 1995. Like many international instruments on women empowerment, Nigeria is a signatory to the global decision in Beijing to give women 35 per cent administrative and party positions. Sadly, the country’s leadership has never implemented the decision.
Even its own derivative framework on women, the 2006 National Gender Policy, has never seen the light of the day, prompting women NGOs in 2020 to sue the Federal Government in the court of law.
It was in the light of this abysmal failure by government to honour the instruments it signed that warranted lawmakers like Rep Nkiruka Onyejeocha to moot the reserves seats bill, which was misconstrued as a subtle means to force women into governance.
As it turned out, the bill was meant to provide women with a platform and voice after a four-year election circle life span.
Ironically, the Federal Executive Council approved the revised National Gender Policy on Wednesday, March 2, 2022, a day after the lawmakers rejected the bills on gender equity!
The view that women have climbed the social ladder as bank and business executives, become heads of public offices and the judiciary misses the whole point of gender equity. The point is that women, like men, should be given equal access to positions of authority to make policies that affect their lives, more so when the national population figure is almost 50/50.
We think women should not be shackled in any way to make decisions and choices that affect their lives.
We hope that the National Assembly will not just revisit the controversial bills; we call on the lawmakers to reverse them. Women should be given a chance.
About the Author
