EQUITY FOR WOMEN IN NIGERIA’S POLITICS & LEADERSHIP, PART 2

March 4, 202

This is “No Bullshiting,” by Harry Agina.

Greetings folks!

I am almost certain that overwhelming majority of Nigerians today want equitable representation of women in Nigeria’s politics and leadership. I am proud to be a champion or strong advocate of this notion. In fact, I actually want more women in power than men, just like in Rwanda. As always, I offer my reasons for my support to women. They include:

(1) INTEGRITY: Women are more trustworthy to manage Nigeria’s resources; our male leaders have stolen us blind, and they are getting worse by the day. Yeah, I know, we had a she-devil called Diezani Maduekwe, who competed with the men folks in stealing. But, so fucking what? I always say. Compared to our male leaders, Diezani’s stealing was just a drop in the bucket. Besides, for every Diezani out there, there are over a million male crooks stealing Nigeria blind. So, my comparative integrity score goes to the women of Nigeria, against the men. And, with the evil level of corruption that is destroying Nigeria in her Fourth Republic governance, integrity has got to be number one among the criteria for choosing our leaders.

(2) PERFORMANCE: Secondly, I support more women than men in Nigeria’s leadership because women tend to outperform men. This fact is also related to the integrity factor. Um him, the women tend to be more diligent at work. They hardly play the absenteeism game of men, for instance, due to their sense of integrity. The men hardly sit their fucking asses down in their offices to do the work that they are getting paid for. You can hardly catch them in their offices when they are needed? Many spend more time running their private businesses, than they spend at their desks in their offices. The records of exemplary female civil servants with dedication to work, and their commensurate performances, are there to see. Ngozi Okonjo-Iwuala, as Finance Minister, and the late Dora Akunyili, as the Head of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration quickly jump to mind. I am yet to see a man in any federal department who has outdone those two.

(3) HOME MANAGEMENT FACTOR: The general, special God-given, natural ability of women to manage our homes must be considered in deciding their role in governance. Skills are what are needed in governance, and this is a good one. Whosoever that fails to consider it, is being very parochial.  Women’s home-management capacity brings a lot to the table in any leadership position. For a start, they come to the table with more family-oriented compassion than men. That does make a difference in attitude to work. In turn, good attitude promotes good compassionate leadership.

Anyway, I will stop with just the three factors above. My point, generally, is that women have more integrity, and more dedication to work than men. Hence, they tend to perform better than men, and without stealing the nation blind, as the men do, period!

Unfortunately, “We The People,” the real owners of the sovereignty of the land, have no say in running our country. We have loot-makers at our National Assembly, who are supposedly representing us. But, they refuse to listen to our will, and they always refuse to do our bidding, as they are supposed to. They have done it again in the people’s quest for equity for women in politics and political governance in Nigeria. Women, and fair-minded men, had pressured the lootmakers to pass affirmative action bills that have been pending, like forever. The bills seek to give more power to women in governance. But, after all the public pressure, the motherfuckers refused to pass them. To the women who converged at the National Assembly to register their demand for equity, the lootmakers virtually told to go to hell, meeeeeeen!!

If I said it once, I said it a gazillion times, that Nigeria’s so-called lawmakers don’t give a damn about what Nigerians want. The reason is not farfetched at all. Too many of them rig themselves into the National Assembly. They have never needed our votes, so they have never respected our will. They don’t feel that they owe us any allegiance as their bosses, after all, we do not vote for them to become lawmakers. Instead, they murderously rig themselves in, to become loot-makers, meeeeeeen!!!

Now, the good news is that we have finally managed to force the lootmakers to pass our reformed electoral act bill into a law. And, by Jupiter, with this, their self-serving impunity days must be over. Yes, indeed! Henceforth, any leader who dares to continue the evil impunity of the present crop, will not be back in that seat in the subsequent election.  With their impunity, and their disdain to Nigerians, majority of the 9th National Assembly lootmakers should be out of job in 2023. Nigerians should go to any legitimate length to vote them out, starting with the highly compromised Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, and the House Speaker, Femi Gbajaiamila.

The geniuses who came up with all the social media components have made the revolution easy. Nigerians are already effectively using the social media for this past-due non-violent revolution. And, I trust that we shall maximally deploy them now to complement the new Electoral Law. A hashtag, #VoteCrooksOutOfPower, is apt for this campaign. And then, we shall cultivate our own crop of lawmakers who will obey our commands and do our bidding, as their bosses. Then, they will give us a law for equity for women in politics and governance, meeeeeeen!!!

The rejection of the Affirmative Action Bills does not even make sense at all. Not when Nigeria’s constitution provides that all citizens are equal under the law. The bill is seeking the same equality that the constitution guarantees…equity in female and male representation in governance. Yet, our lootmakers continue to turn down such bills, against our will. More annoying, is the fact that they do it with impunity, like our overlords. This is a case of servants who are more powerful than their masters. And, this is possible only in Nigeria, meeeeeeen!!!

Nigeria claims to be the giant of Africa only by word of mouth. We have nothing progressive to show for the empty claim. Other smaller African nations are more progressive than us in every sensible way. Liberia, for instance, has had a woman as president, whereas Nigeria cannot even allow a woman to be state governor. Sure, Mrs. Virginia Etiaba of Anambra State was once governor of Anambra State for few months, but only in an interim capacity that happened by chance.

Rwanda’s Parliament currently has 61.3 percent women, and 48.7 percent men. This makes Rwanda the country with the highest share of women in parliament, in the entire world. Other African countries with progressive representation of women in their Parliaments include: South Africa, 46.4% women; Namibia, 44.2% women; Mozambique, 43.4%; Senegal, 43% women. Meanwhile, the so-called Africa’s giant, Nigeria, has only 6 percent women in the parliament. She has 7 women in a Senate of 109, and only 22 women among 360 members of the House of Representative. That’s a total of 29 women in a parliament of 469…un-fucking-believable, meeeeeeen!!!

However, even as I blame the lootmakers for rejecting equity seeking Bills for women, the women have their own blames, too. Um huh, the women folks are not working hard enough to elevate themselves. If they make all the right moves, they can grab more power from men. It does not have to be given to them! For a start, they must organize themselves to maximize the advantage of their numbers, to win elections. And, to achieve this, the enlightened ones among them must work harder to enlighten the less privileged and ignorant ones. A lot of African women still live in the ancient parochial world. In their world, women were/are just for the kitchen, and “the other room,” according to President Buhari. In that ancient world, women are only to be seen, but never to be heard. So, the women in that world see political women as wayward and spoilt women who don’t know their bounds.

          This parochial mentality is more apparent among Muslim women, as religious beliefs merge forces with the cultural traditions. No wonder, we have the ridiculous situation where women are voting for men in elections, against their fellow women. It is estimated that women cast over 60 percent of all the votes in elections in Nigeria. In other words, they have the numbers, and they are politically active. The data on the 2015 presidential election voters turnout shows that housewives were the third highest out of the nine categories that voted. Note that I ignored the 2019 election voting data, because I don’t recognize Buhari’s rigged presidential election of 2019. Anyway, the three top categories of voters and their votes in 2015 were as follows: Civil servants 4,628,433; 4,480,708 students; and housewives, 3,667,076. Do remember that, besides the housewives category of women only, there are also women in all the other categories, too. Hence, the over 60 percent total estimation for women’s voting power is probably grossly understated. And yet, men are winning the elections, because women shun their fellow women and vote for men…completely fucked-up, meeeeeeeeeeen!!!

Besides voting, women are also their own self-defeatist enemies in other ways. I once blogged on one of them, when I came across an example. I heard a woman who tried to justify the dearth of women in our political leadership. Her stupid justification was that Diezani Allison-Maduakwe stole a lot of money when she was a minister. Therefore, men are scared of allowing more women in power. I was so annoyed by the woman because she’s not just another ignorant woman. No sir, no ma’am! She’s a broadcaster! And, if I say that I felt so bad about the woman’s comment, you can be sure that I had to lambast her in a blog. If you missed it, maybe you want to read it to conclude this discourse. If so, please click this link: https://nobullshiting.com/equity-for-nigerian-women-in-politics-government-some-defeatist-tendencies-of-the-women/