Nigeria joins the world in celebrating International Women’s Day with gender activists mourning the decimation of their numeral strength in governance.
The 1999 Senate had three women: Senators Florence Ita-Giwa, Stella Omu, and Khairat Gwadabe. However, 25 years later, it is a mark of the nation’s disrespect for gender equality that the IWD would be marked with only three women as senators in a chamber of 108 senators. Senator Natasah Akpoti-Uduaghan, who could have been the fourth female senator, was on Thursday suspended from the chamber in what many have described as the most repressive exertion of testosterone in the chamber since 1999.
According to the Senate resolution, she should not present herself as a senator of the Federal Republic anywhere.
With women constituting just 3.6% of the 10th Senate and another 17 women in the 360 House of Representatives, representing 4.7%, there is no doubt that Nigeria falls short of gender balance in parliament.
As of 2024, the average representation of women in African parliaments was 26% with the majority of the countries having failed to attain the 40% benchmark for gender balance.
Only five countries, Rwanda with 61% of parliamentarians being women, South Africa with 46.7%, Namibia with 44.2%, Mozambique with 42.4% and Ethiopia 41.5% met the mark.
It is remarkable that Nigeria was at one time improving in its gender representation index with about 10 females in the Senate while the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP was in power.
However, since 2015 that figure has progressively decreased to the level it is today in damning rebuke of Nigeria’s assertions on the Beijing Conference of affirmative action as chorused exactly 30 years ago.
Rwanda, South Africa, and Namibia, which topped the list in gender balance, also came in the top half of the Mo Ibrahim Governance Index, proving to some degree that women representatives in government help to promote good governance.
There is no doubt that the disappearance of women in parliament is correlated to the increasing bastardisation of the electoral process in the country. More women, like many faint-hearted men, have despaired over the intrigues and violence that lead to the election of our lawmakers.
Only the women who can fight like men are able to scale through the emotional and physical skirmishes that is called election in Nigeria. That perhaps explains the controversial claims of Senator Florence Ita-Giwa when she poohpoohed the claims of sexual harassment that Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan raised against Senate President Godswill Akpabio.
According to Ita-Giwa, any woman who can survive the intrigues to win an election into the Senate cannot talk about sexual harassment! That is still a controversial claim, though.
So as Nigeria marks the International Women’s Day today, there is bound to be a particular focus on the Senate and deeper interrogation of the issues that led to the six months suspension of Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan from the Senate.
The allegation of sexual harassment brought by her against Akpabio was the first time such an issue would be brought against a presiding officer since the advent of the Fourth Republic. It is, however, not true that the Senate has been very clean of sexcapades. Lurid tales of illicit affairs occur, especially when Senators go on retreats with some ad-hoc committees reportedly being mandated to arrange young ladies for the comfort of male senators.
In one such retreat many years ago, a presiding officer was reportedly slapped by his wife who saw him entangled with a lady while the male senators were ‘communiquing.’
The jury is still out there as to the transparency and probity embarked by the 10th Senate in dealing with the allegation brought against Akpabio by Akpoti-Uduaghan.
This case, along with other pernicious legislative conduct of the 10th Senate has further diminished the institution. The crass disobedience to a court order and the rush to indict and punish the female lawmaker do not portray the Senate in a good light.
While many believe that Akpabio may indeed be innocent of the allegation made by Akpoti-Uduaghan, the rush by the Senate to punish her was largely indecorous. Akpabio could well have appeared before the Senate investigative committee and dared Akpoti-Uduaghan to produce her evidence.
The fear is that Akpabio did not want to go that route simply because he may have been afraid of the eruption of other unpalatable issues between him and Akpoti-Uduaghan, which are essentially not relating to sex.
As Nigerians have been made to recall, the suspended senator’s husband, Chief Emmanuel Uduaghan had been a long-standing family friend of the Akpabios. Their relationship predated the marital engagement between Uduaghan and Natasha. Akpabio confessed to attending and sleeping over during the marriage in Kogi State.
Indeed, Akpabio’s communication strategist, Mr Ken Okulugbo, while defending his principal on Channels Television on Thursday night confessed that he was recommended for his job by Chief Uduaghan.
So, being top players in the Nigerian political space, there is no doubt that the Akpabios and Uduaghans would have shared secrets and collaborated in their respective journeys to dominance in their political and business spaces. Along the way, they would have known one another’s unpalatable issues.
So, one conspiracy theory emerging is that the Senate President brought the weight of his powers on Natasha not because he was guilty of sexual harassment of a family friend but because of the fear of the unknown!
