Lady Nkiru Celine Okoro (PhD) is the Executive Director, Centre For Organisational Development and the Publisher, Africawomannig.com. In this interview with ENE OSHABA she speaks on the rejected Gender Bills, the 2023 elections amongst others.
It’s six months already since women protested the rejection of the Gender Bills by the National Assembly. What’s the update?
Thank you for the privilege and opportunity of revisiting the touchy and sensitive subject of the Nigerian Gender Bills 62 years after independence, 23 years after uninterrupted civilian administration, and 22 years into the new millennia also known as the 21st Century.
I dare say that Nigeria as a country is one in conspiracy against the female gender. From the girl-child, to the Nigerian woman, there is a subtle societal socialisation of females as a lesser person, lesser human being that was created to serve the nuances, vicissitudes, whims and caprices of the male gender.
The Nigerian society has taken the conspiracy of patriarchy to a whole new worrisome dimension where the issues and concerns of the female gender are trivialised and taken as one that does not really matter.
From the negative branding of gender and human rights activist, as disgruntled members of the society, and the general treatment of issues that concern women and girls as if they do not matter, all through the federation, the feelings of neglect are palpable and sadly so.
Concerning the Gender Bills, women are organising; women are strategising and remain undaunted and resolute in re-accessing their second rate life in Nigeria.
They are engaging and developing workable strategies to regain their freedom and their inalienable rights as human beings as in the words of Hillary Clinton in 1995, “Women’s Rights are Human Rights.”
Why do you think the Bills were rejected despite Nigeria being signatory to several international treaties on gender parity?
It’s conspiracy of the elite, with active connivance of the Nigerian society. Sadly, I have been actively involved in Nigeria’s gender movement since the year 2000, which is 22 years after. There is a subtle societal rejection of women’s right to be seen and heard as still being anti culture, anti religion, anti establishments.
Even the strongest and the most unbiased Nigerian deeply feels and believes that women were created to help and assist them and as a result, their roles and functions must be limited to those things men feel comfortable for them to do to enhance the efficiency of male dominion and subjugation.
They are okay when women conceive and bear male children, nurture them through several years of unpaid care giving to produce the same kind of men who in-turn continue to bring women down. This is what l call, the vicious circle of patriarchy.
Section 12 (1) sub section one, of the 1999 Constitution as revised states expressly that no international treaty shall have the force of law in Nigeria except through the domestication of same by the Acts of National Assembly. This is part of the conspiracy of the Nigerian elite.
What is the importance of the Gender Bills in view of the population of women as 2023 general election approaches?
Sadly, the outcome of the primary elections clearly showed the abysmal performance of women in the 2023 elections already.
Apart from Distinguished Senator Aishatu Ahmad (Binani Duku) who clinched the APC governorship ticket in Adamawa state; Kwara has one House of Assembly member in PDP four women; 10 female governorship candidates in six states and 24 female deputy governorship candidates in 15 states.
What’s your take on the notion by some Senators that the constitution is clear on the rights of citizens hence the Gender Bills was needless?
This is laughable, why do we still have senators and representatives when we already have a constitution? They should pack and go home then. This is an opinion and thought process borne out of ignorance and it is so sad for people who ought to know.
Do you think gender mainstreaming would truly open spaces for women?
Nigeria has one of the lowest numbers of female in the legislature and was ranked 181 in position out of 193 countries with only 3.6 per cent. What other means can we use in getting the Bill passed and increase the numbers of women as representatives if not gender mainstreaming through the Affirmative Action?
What would say are the major constraints to mainstreaming gender into national life?
The fact that people don’t understand the concept of gender; many people think gender is maybe women or gender is coming to make women become men, or there’s not all that kind of confusion, both in the men’s side and also the women’s side.
One of the things that came very clearly was that the understanding of what gender is, was not very clear to many people.
This is one of the reasons why there is a push back from men because they think gender is something that is going to come to overthrow them, maybe to belittle them.
So, there is a need for us to make this concept popular; the need to contextualise the context, the concept itself because one of the things I believe is that if you look at all the countries, we are at different levels of implementing some of the conventions, some of the gender policies of our country. We are not at the same level and we have to understand where we find ourselves and then we have to work from that base, then what we have to add.
One problem we have with popularising the concept of gender equality is that donors are not really very willing to put money in bags. And they say, we have spent so many years, you know, holding workshops, training.
We need to sit down and really look, and ask: what are those key messages that we want to really send out there in terms of gender equality? One thing I’ve come to see is that when people fully understand the concept of gender and they understand the rationale, the importance, the value that it is going to add, they would be a little bit more open to getting involved in gender equality. So, we have to maybe try to see and make sure that we get the right messages outside.
The second thing I would like to point out to us is that the piecemeal approach or those kind of just having one programme or just working in silos just as something, doing something or just one of those projects is not going to really help us push the needle. We need an integrated, holistic impact for leaving no one behind programme because every woman must push for political participation and political leadership needs economic empowerment.
We can’t do politics without money. So let’s try to integrate some of these issues that we are discussing and you will see that even within ourselves, some people want to work in silos. It’s not going to help us.
We need to come together to look at a holistic, integrated, impactful, sustainable, approach that leaves no one behind. Everybody is important. This work is too big for one agency. This work is too big for one NGO. This is too big for governments alone. So, it’s all of us who have to really work together.
One of the things I see is that we are not together. I think if we want to make this thing go further, we need to be together. We need to come out as one to work together. So I think there is a need to strengthen women’s organisation and women’s enterprises.
There is a real need for institutional support and that is one of the roles of UNwomen. UNwomen must strengthen our women led organisations and enterprises.
We need to have more coordination. I’m talking about coordination at the level of Abuja, coordination at the level of the states, coordination at the level of the local government area. We would go down to listen to the women to know why it does not work.
We went to the six geopolitical zones and we made sure that the surrounding states around the locations that we also had representatives. some of the people who are even commissioners are women affairs and some of the people that are pushing for gender don’t even know what gender is all about.
So, there is need for us not only to end in Abuja, but to go down, go to the other states, make sure that the coordination there is stronger, and make sure that the message, the right message is passed to the right people.
It is very important that women’s organisations, women led organisations or women organisations that are actually looking for gender equality, working for gender equality, has got adequate resources.
And I would like to say that even in mobilising resources, we have to be together. We have to work together. You and women are standing in for women. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we are doing it with women’s organisations. It’s true. We may have other organisations that oppose that. We are actually there for women. So let’s work together. Let’s be together. Let’s work together. This is one of the strongest messages I think we should take. Let’s work together. When we work together, we can make our voice heard and come out strong.
The domestication of all the frameworks, the legal instruments, the conventions that have been ratified is another. These conventions are not known. But even the women for whom we are talking about, even the gender bills, the rural women don’t know what we’re talking about.
So, we can’t even get their support. They don’t know what was in that bill. What is it? They don’t they don’t know.
So, I think we need to come to the point where we work together to make sure that these international legal frameworks are actually domesticated, because it is even said that they have pre-eminence to over national laws. So if a country has ratified CEDAW, we should be able to use CEDAW in the courts. But how would the magistrate, how would they judge U.S. law in the courts when he or she does not even know what this is all about?
So, there is need to popularise these all these legal instruments. There is need for us to translate this need for people to really know about these documents.
The one big issue that we also have to work together is generation of gender disaggregated data. You can’t talk about gender responsive budgeting, without gender responsive planning and budgeting. Actually, we can’t do it without having gender disaggregated data. This is something that is missing for all of us. We have some, but we don’t have all we need.
The gender disaggregated data is going to help us with our evidence based advocacy, because sometimes people are also tired of hearing the same stories since 1920, having the same situation that we should have gender disaggregated data that shows that progress is being made in this area, in that area, and progress needs to be made in this other area.
The situation is always negative. There are also positive things that have been done by all of us and the governments. So those things need to come out and we need to know what we are supposed to be focusing our attention, not just being broad based.
We need to know where we focus. The thing I would think is an issue that all of us have to work together is women’s access to information, access to resources, services, markets, information, justice, security services, educational services, health services. This is actually something that actually all of us have to work together.
Do you have any new strategies you can recommend concerning the Gender Bills?
Women should resolve to vote out male lawmakers that voted against the Gender Bills during the next elections.
We have a patriarchy system which has eaten very deep into our society. These, no doubt, have affected the consideration they gave to these Bills. They need to be purged of their beliefs on what the women represent and their understanding of the capabilities and abilities.
