2015 Presidential Election: Where Are The Women?

By Banji Ojewale

In politics if you want anything said ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman – Margret Hilda Thatcher, ex-British Prime Minister

Last year the government in Romania heeded this counsel from the late British leader, Baroness Thatcher. The authorities, gravely worried by high profile corruption slowly killing the country, appointed a woman, Laura Codruta Kovesi, to man the nation’s National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA). Within a very short time this 41-year-old 1995 law graduate has turned the  formerly  quiescent agency into a viable attack dog mauling down those who had themselves been bringing down the economy and politics of Romania with their corrupt practices.

*Laura Codruta Kovesi

She has become the most feared public office holder on account of her exploits in an attempt to do what was thought to be impossible: battling graft in high places to a standstill and arresting its spread. Although as in Nigeria, she is horrified that the citizens have expressed  distaste for corruption, they still keep voting for politicians suspected or convicted of larceny.  “ It is extremely difficult to explain this contrast,” Kovesi laments.

But according to an international news magazine report last week, this depressing situation has not discouraged  the woman. A New York Times writer, Andrew Higgins, says: “Since Ms. Kovesi took over D.N.A last year, what was a trickle of high-profile arrests and prosecutions has become a flood. Nearly all have ended in convictions, with her prosecutors recording a success rate of over 90 percent.

“Her agency’s biggest conviction so far has been a former Prime Minister, Adrian Nastaste, sentenced in January to four years in prison for taking bribes. He spent only six months behind bars, securing release for good behavior. But his conviction sent tremors through Romania’s political class.

*Margaret Thatcher 

“So far this year, 16 legislators – seven senators and nine members of the lower house of Parliament – have been indicted, along with an army general, four prosecutors and 18 judges. Among those already placed in pretrial detention is Viorel Hrebenciuc, a Social Democratic power broker who was once considered untouchable.

“Nobody expected this to ever happen, “said Sorin Ionita, a policy analyst in Bucharest. “It is unbelievable to see people like this put in jail”.

She is a reminder of late Dora Prof. Dora Nkem Akunyili, Nigeria’s anti-drug Amazon who uprooted the system and ensured the scene wasn’t the same way she met it. So outstanding was her success story that local and international fake drug cartels were reported to have ganged up to assassinate her. Undeterred by the colossal drug-dollars at the disposal of these characters along with their connection to high places, she tracked down the sources of the illicit killer substances and stopped their flow to the public. Akunyili stepped on great toes including the mighty ones of her people in Nigeria’s south east, infamously considered the lair of toxic drugs production.

Dora Akunyili 

When she was kicked upstairs from the office of Director – General of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control ( NAFDAC) and appointed a minister, majority of Nigerians mourned a loss they considered worse than death!

But it was jubilation for the peddlers of deadly counterfeit potion. Still it was a sort of Pyrrhic joy. There was a fear that if Akunyili moved on in the political trajectory  she might rise to become Nigeria’s first female president, perpetuating the tradition of women in places like Israel ( Golda Meir ), Britain ( Margret Thatcher ),  India (Indira  Gandhi), Liberia ( Ellen Johnson Sirleaf), Germany (Angela Merkel ), Brazil  (Dilma Rousseff) etc.

I believe that Nigeria would also be better  for it: to have a woman president applying the touch of solid accomplishments the way it was done by Akunyili, Kovesi, Thatcher, Golda Meir etc. Which makes it dejecting that there is no female figure among those in the presidential race at the moment. In the past, the closest we had was the feeble attempt by Dr. Sarah Jubril, who lately has traded off her ambition for the unchallenging and pedestrian office of special adviser to the president.  She is no longer the fiery Amazon we rated then.

*Angela Merkel

Naturally, we hail President Goodluck Jonathan for offering  Nigerian women an unprecedented number of strategic portfolios in his cabinet. This has the potential of giving our women a powerful platform to aim for the presidency in 2019. It is not enough. Our womenfolk must be visible at all levels: National and local points of governance. At present, they don’t seem to have a powerful voice except in a very limited way at the federal level.

We are experiencing a tragic exclusion of women in politics of Nigeria. They have less than 7% representation in elective positions. This is an unwise and unproductive policy in a society where about half of the population are women. We need to tap their resources which so far we have ignored to the grave hurt of the society.

*Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf 

For too long, we’ve run Nigeria along narrow malecentirc lines that have only stunted full progress and made nonsense of our huge expenditure on manpower and infrastructure. A wider involvement of women in government in the affairs of the society especially at the apex realm of politics means engaging a critical society sector of the population namely women in nation building. 

It is a new thinking we must embrace and support if Nigeria must move on to new heights of advancement in the 21^st century. The so-called Asian Tigers are making it because they have leveraged politics and government for women over the years. Any wonder then that the region has contributed substantially to the impressive number of women heads of state globally?

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*Ojewale, a journalist at Onibuku, Ota, Ogun State, is a contributor to SCRUPLES. He could be reached with: bmrtbo@yahoo.com