We mentor girls for solid political grounds – WIPF coordinator

Ifendu
Ebere Ifendu is the National Woman Leader of the Labour Party (LP) and President, Women in Politics Forum (WIPF), an umbrella body for women leaders of registered political parties in Nigeria, Women and NGOs interested in politics. In this interview with ENE OSANG, the trained lawyer of over 10 years experience enumerates the forum’s activities. She equally expresses disappointment at the recent APC convention where women were denied vital leadership positions

Preparation of WIPF for 2015
The Women in Politics Forum is the umbrella body for women leaders of registered political parties in Nigeria and other women interested in politics. We have started mentoring young women to encourage them to participate in politics because we discovered that there is a vacuum. Young women shy away from politics. Some of us didn’t have the luxury of being mentored and we can feel the impact of not having a mentor, so we decided to start mentoring young women. Recently, we had a programme tagged : Organizational Strengthening Strategic Planning and Capacity Development Workshop: it was held to build the capacity of women leaders for the task ahead towards 2015 elections. WIPF started with the support of International Republican Institute(IRI) and Women Democratic Network(WDN). We are also working with UNDP/DGD. They have so far sponsored all our mentoring sessions and are still enthusiastic working with us.

How many women have you mentored so far?
We have mentored 300 young women; we did hundred per geopolitical zone and so far we have done the South-East, South-West and South-South. We will also start with the North-East, North-West and North-Central but because of the insecurity challenges we have now, we will bring the young girls from the three Zones to Abuja. At the end of the sessions, we would have mentored a total of 600 young women.

How do you select the girls that you train?
We select girls from across party line, we ask each political party to send three young ladies between ages 18-35 and we also get young girls from the civil societies, schools and professional bodies. With the support coming from UNDP, we have consultants to talk to them, we also from time to time bring in women politicians to share their experiences, challenges, success and everything with the girls. After every training, we encourage women already in politics to adopt some of the girls to mentor. I have presently 20 young girls that I am mentoring across party line.

For young girls interested in politics
It is part of what we are teaching the girls and they are very excited. From the three zones we have mentored, the reception has been wonderful. We don’t have the resources we would have extended it for more girls to participate because the enthusiasm is high and the girls now have a better understanding that politics is not as bad as they were made to believe. They now know that they can actually participate not just as mere members but can also aspire to elective positions. We encourage them to come out even as councillors, they should belong and be active in a political party by paying their dues and making sure that they are part of the executive starting from the ward level.

Can’t political parties affect your forum negatively?
The truth is that even though we are in the Forum, we are independent and have not deserted our various political parties. We are a pressure group, where something good is happening in party ‘A’ you introduce it to your party, or where it is happening in your party, party ‘B’ picks it to take to her party. It is important to state here that as women in politics, we are faced with the same challenges. So, you will see that across party line that it is working out for women. What we are doing is to have more women participate in politics and we don’t advocate for women to join a particular political party rather we try to project what we have in our different political parties and it is left for the women to make up their minds on where to go to.
They are also beginning to see that there are more women in all the political parties and that most of these women now have openings or positions for them to participate and this is part of our achievements. Before now, people feel that you have to belong to a particular political party before you can be relevant in politics, with WIPF we have exposed other parties. We also use the Forum to support any woman that is being oppressed in her party. Generally, we are working together to promote women issues.

Challenges of working together as women from different political parties
No, we have not faced any challenge. When we started the first thing we did was to bring the party chairmen together and had a 2-day meeting with them in Calabar which was sponsored by UNDP. During the meeting, we shared our fears and aspirations with them and we got their commitment. For the three zones we have trained so far, we had in attendance the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) Chairman, Mr. Tanko Yunusa and the Secretary, Comrade Peter Ameh. They represent all the political parties so we are not working in isolation and so far we have enjoyed a reasonable support from them.

Any support to members vying for political office?
We are working with the Nigeria Women’s Trust Fund (WTF) and we are part of the group that worked on the eligibility criteria for the trust fund. With our support, I think it would be easier for women to access funds from the fund and we are also thinking of bringing women candidates across party line and have a programme for them on running an effective campaign and Fund Raising. WIPF will work in collaboration with the Women in advertising. We have already gotten the commitment of IRI to bring in experts from America that would teach women on fund raising, election campaign and many other things like setting up manifestos and programmes. So, working with us in the Forum will avail women better chances of getting support and in our own little way we are asking the women entrepreneurs to be part of what we are doing.
We can’t all be there as legislators or in the executive but we can make an impact by supporting any credible woman that is coming out. Recently, with the support of IRI and Women in Advertising, we participated at an interactive dinner “ Preparing to Run” with Mr. Craig Smith, a Political Strategist and Former Deputy White House Political Director and also a Senior Political Adviser for “ I’m Ready for Hilary.

Can women get support from ‘financial godmothers’ as did their male counterparts?
Yes, we have such women, they may not have been supporting other women but that is why we started the forum and have women entrepreneurs as members. We have indicated interest to partner with Women in Business WIMBIZ. Our major role will be to bridge that gap between Women in Politics and Women in Business. We have identified finance as one of the challenges of women politicians. Right now, we are identifying quality women to encourage and support to contest elections. We actually hope that when the primaries are over and we have women candidates in various political parties and we can be able to say across party line that this number of women are contesting elections, then we can reach out to entrepreneurs and ask for their support and that is when the fund raising programme will come in. For us, we need to achieve this, getting women to support their own. I want to say that in 2015 we will have women support other women financially.

Security challenge in the north and women in politics
Yes I think so, even those who are not in the core North are affected. You can see that no place is safe again in Nigeria. Women are traumatised and want to be alive and protect their children first before talking about politics. It is so worrisome that at the time the country is talking about educating more women that young girls that went to school were abducted and up till now they are yet to be released by their abductors. The government has made commitment to secure their release, we are hoping that it will be achieved urgently as this will affect negatively the education of the girl child especially in the Northern States. Terrorist activities affect women more though, we hope and pray that our country will conquer it. As we continue to pray for peace, we hope to break every barrier to achieve our aims and objectives.

Your take on alleged denial of women executive positions in APC convention
As a forum, we had a press conference condemning it and we have also communicated to the party a copy of our statement, to let them know that Nigerian women are watching every political party on gender issues. For me and for the forum, any political party that will not support women will also not be supported by women. The woman actually bought the nomination form, she was screened and cleared. She campaigned up to the convention ground for the position of deputy national organizing secretary, which was zoned to her side. To our understanding, no other person bought the form, naturally it was expected that she was going to be a consensus candidate only for them to announce a man that never bought form, was not screened and the annoying part was that the man was not even in the country and was not at the venue of the convention. Are they now saying elections are done by proxy? Women In Politics is against it and we hope that this injustice would be corrected. We are waiting for the report of the appeal committee. Any political party that will have women occupy only the position of women leaders is indirectly telling us that they do not trust the ability of women to hold any leadership position. It is obvious that a man cannot be a woman leader, otherwise they will put a man as a woman leader. Nigerian women will go against any political party or establishment that is against us.

Will this convention affect women negatively?
It will not affect only women because we have come to a point where we will tell our women that any political party that does not support women, we should not also have their interest at heart. Women are more than half of the population and if we come to terms not to vote for a particular party both men and women will suffer the consequence. The just concluded Ekiti State election showed that women electorates were 53% of registered voters. Also, the report from INEC on the August 9 election coming up in Osun State, women are still above 53%. I don’t think any reasonable political party will like to lose our patronage.

So will women contest political injustices to court?
Yes we will. WIPF is also collaborating with Federation of International Female Lawyers (FIDA). They will support any woman that will have a need to challenge her mandate in court. We will also make sure that we roll out a solid campaign to talk to women on why they should vote against any political party that is against our common interest.

Have women gotten enough exposure for support during elections?
Yes we have really earned the support of the people.

What are the indicators?
To be honest, the exposure has been there, it’s just the enabling environment that we do not have to come out, part of the reason being that one cannot come out as an independent candidate, but must belong to a political party. You can see that political parties determine our future as women. Again, within the parties because men are in the forefront, they have put in place some policies that hinder women from participating as they should. This is primarily because of lack of genuine internal party democracy. Even though parties come out to say they have internal democracy, I say what we have is not genuine internal party democracy. Some of the parties claiming to be progressives are really not, when a political party will have only the position of women leaders for women. When are we going to have a woman national chairperson of a political party?

Advice to young female politicians
That is where we really need the support of the media, they help to mould perception about women. When a man is contesting an election, the press will interview the man and ask him issue based questions. A woman will be asked about fashion and her private life. I begin to wonder if they see us as intellectually bankrupt. The press should also ask her issue based questions. Both the press and society, who portray women politicians as wayward only use that to scare women from participating. Women in Politics are not loose rather they have integrity and very high morals.