What will it take to get proportional representation in Nigeria?

As I listened in on the discussions of a committee of Harvard Law School students planning for an African Law conference in April 2010, I was surprised to hear that apparently there are some who are of the view that law plays little or no role in development. I volunteered that it would be interesting to have a debate about that. But I kept thinking about the role of law to ‘develop’ a society, community or country or even the role of law in influencing and changing culture – such as the way Mary Slessor’s work in Nigeria made it illegal to murder twins. The way we now practically worship twins and multiple births, and pray ‘ibeji’ and ‘ibeta’ for brides, no one would guess that less than one hundred years ago we rejected this as a blessing.

Nigeria does badly in many indices: our democracy and press under the Freedom House list; our corruption under Transparency International, the ease of doing business by the World Bank, our ability to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, our literacy rates, our infant mortality, our maternal mortality, on and on ad infinitum.

When asked what holds us back many people say corruption, however, and not in any way to trivialize corruption, politics in the United States is highly corrupt (it is just effectively isolated from the provision of basic services and development policies) and there are other parts of the world such as South Africa and Italy, where there is corruption, but things still work and they are not lagging behind on almost every development index.

There are other things that hold us back, including our laws. What the laws say, what they are about (National Assembly do we really need: HB. 182 A Bill for an Act to Establish the National Institute of Nigerian Philosophers and to Make Provisions for Determining the Standard of Knowledge and Skill to Be Attained by Persons Seeking to Become Professional Philosophers and for Other Connected Purposes?) and whether the laws are practical and enforceable and if there is the will to ever enforce them.

As we prepare for the 2011 elections and discuss the changes to our Constitution and the Electoral Act one thing that keeps coming up is having a system of proportional representation – for women, the physically challenged and other unrepresented minorities. Think of a better more realistic version of ‘federal character’ where we would make sure that our legislature actually reflects the ‘Nigerian character’ – which is almost 50% women. Today, women make up only 7.0% of the House of Representatives (hardly representative) and 8.3% in the Senate, making us 116^th out of 136 on yet another index. (http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm).

To put this in perspective we are only a few points above Somalia in terms of women representation in parliament and below, the Congo and Sao Tome & Principe. Two out of the first three countries in the world with the highest female representation are African: Rwanda has overtaken Sweden as number one with 56.3% and 34.6% in its lower and upper house respectively and South Africa is third highest in the world with 44.5% and 29.6% respectively.

Apparently, part of the Uwais Report on electoral reform, which to my knowledge has never been made public in its entirety, recommends that we adopt the proportional representation system which is designed to ensure that the legislative body reflects the voting strength of the electorate. However, the recommendation is not to amend the constitution but to amend the Electoral Act to force parties to reserve 30% of their seats for women (and 2% for those with physical disabilities), without prejudice to the right to also compete for representation outside this reserved seats- so that arguably, women could have more than 30% representation. This is the election law quota option.

There are two other avenues to using law to improve female representation. One is with constitutional quotas – where the constitution expressly reserves seats for women in the national law making body, as is the case in Burkina Faso, Uganda and Rwanda. After the genocide in Rwanda, women’s participation in the drafting of the new constitution resulted in a provision which reserves 24 out of 80 in the lower house and 6 out of 20 in the Senate. This means 30% of the seats is firmly held for women and they can vie for more.

The other is through political parties which is the system used in South Africa, where after years of apartheid, the ANC reserves 50% of its candidate lists for women and now they are ahead of us on this and many development curves, even though we arguably have more experience as a democracy give or take a few coups. In the political parties quota system, the political parties adopt internal laws which reserve a certain percentage of positions for female candidates – and with the ANC being the most popular party, this has resulted in increased women representation across the country.

It is widely acknowledged amongst development specialists that the inclusion of women, who usually make up half or more of the population, in decision making and their involvement in public and private enterprise improves the development indices of a country. This is the major thesis behind the push to educate females, provide financial independence through micro financing and provide platforms for greater participation.

The practice of proportional representation is not without its drawbacks. In Pakistan, where local government reform mandates 33% representation of women, most of the women elected, when interviewed, confessed to being mere proxies for husbands, male relatives, heads of clans or even landlords and forced to vote based on instructions from these people. And there are rich countries like the United States with only 10% female representation or some, like Nepal, with high female participation who continue to struggle with development.

Proponents of proportional representation are not saying that increased women representation will lead to immediate improvement in our physical, mental and cultural development. It took Sweden thirty years of practicing proportional representation to get where they are – but today Sweden has one of the best standards of living in the world according to the Human Development Report and some of the reasons are their high levels of education, democracy, income and public health.

Nigeria has nothing to lose if we legally adopt proportional representation in any one of the three available options. The same way we now see value in multiple births is the same way we will see the value in increased participation of women in governance.