Still on Sarah Jubril

Are Nigerian women making any real progress towards fair representation in elected offices? The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Mrs. Josephine Anenih seems to think so. She was recently quoted as stating that the INEC lists indicate that 88 women are contesting for elective office in the April elections. She considered this a good result worthy of all the efforts, the initiatives, the time and the money spent on promoting women in politics. I am not sure if this assessment is accurate considering that in 2007 eighty eight women were sworn in as federal and state legislators and if we add the women who formed half of a ticket such as Mrs. Sosan of Lagos State, then we had more than 88 women in elected positions after the last elections. What the results of the primaries means is that it is likely that on May 29 2011, we will have fewer women being sworn in than we did in 2007 (not counting those contesting in the local government elections later in the year).

How come the increased awareness, the concerted efforts of civil society and donors, the rallies, workshops and campaigns have resulted in less representation for women than before? What are we doing wrong?

Mrs. Sarah Jubril has been very vocal about the role women have played or not played in scuttling her ambition for political ascendancy to the highest office in Nigeria and it is clear she blames them, at least partially, for the failure. Many reasons and excuses have been given why Mrs. Jubril did not make an impact during the Peoples Democratic Party primaries: she was not the right candidate, women cannot vote for another woman just because of gender; she was not prepared, she did not campaign, she did not spend money…the list is endless. There is also the allegation that women are just jealous of each other and so will never support the ambitions of another woman. Many people would want to dismiss this last argument, because, advertising or no advertising, a woman’s best friend is not a diamond, but her best friend…which is usually another woman. However, news that a group of female advocates recently held a protest against the candidacy of another woman who had been nominated as the CPC candidate for the Bauchi Federal Constituency, makes it difficult to ignore the allegation of jealousy or that women find it hard to support other woman.

There is an explanation for the relationship between women, men and politics which has been elegantly and succinctly summed up by Rosemary O’Grady, a lawyer from Australia. She says ‘because women’s liberation (substitute participation, emancipation or whatever word is applicable) is a movement of the powerless for the powerless, its attraction is not immediately clear to the powerless, who feel they need alliance with the powerful to survive’.

There are several reasons why in Nigeria women are finding it hard to press forward in politics and they are all tied to O’Grady’s statement. One, the majority of the small number of women who make it into political nirvana and get the positions of their choice, get there because they are ‘somebody’s’ wife, daughter, not-so-secret mistress or sister. As such they are already aligned with power and do not owe their position to any women’s group. For instance, at a Women and Power seminar at the Kennedy School of Government in April 2010, a current female Senator who is vying for re-election in 2011 told a listening audience from different parts of the world that she resented being asked questions related to gender issues such as the Yerima Child Bride case and that she was not for anyone but herself. Go figure. Two, for those who are not affiliated by blood to power but who make it into the men’s club, they soon realize that the way to survive is to be quiet about ‘women’s issues’ and play by the exclusionary rules of the club. Three, women have been socialized for centuries to be contemptuous of themselves…the oppressed never like each other because they can smell the stench of shame and abuse on each other and would rather be far away from it. Oppressed men, oppress weaker men, women or children and oppressed women, oppress weaker women, men and children- it’s the law of the jungle. When you bring this structure to politics, women are unable to see each other as ‘leaders’ or authority figures and so they willing and some would say logically choose men over women. And, four, women have less practice than men at bungling things up and wielding power and as such when some of us that are not used to power get a taste of power, we often, like men, misuse it…but we get greater publicity for our gaffs than men do…because men control the media and want to reinforce the message to the public that ‘women cannot be trusted’.

But women are the sole breadwinners in many families. They juggle work or business with raising happy children and even find time volunteer. They are the best friends to each other and their sisters and can be relied on to share their last dime. They can manage money and stretch a budget tighter than any Central Bank Governor has ever done and they navigate the world of in-laws with the finesse of the most savvy political strategists…yet when it comes to the public arena things constantly fall apart for women and we cannot get our act together. Could it be our strategy of ‘aligning’ with power – the men who scorn and mock us is not the best strategy? How successful was the 100 Women Group at lobbying for increased femal participation? Could it be we need to stop stooping to conquer in every aspect of our lives? While stooping might work in certain areas, it is doubtful if it is the panacea to every ill. Besides, Stooping to conquer is not a sustainable strategy. If a person’s self-esteem is constantly rubbed into the ground when they finally get the upper hand they are more likely to go berserk.

Noble as it is for money, time and resources to be expended to promote women in politics and to attain the goal of 35% political representation maybe we need to try some ‘re-socialisation’ of the public, especially focused at women and young people.

Women have many wonderful qualities that would be of great benefit to society and they should be allowed to contribute without being made to feel they are inferior or are being ‘allowed’ to humour them or their men. The sooner women themselves realize that our lack of collaboration benefits only the men and that the men are never going to invite us to the table to ‘eat’ with them, the sooner we will realize that since most of the time, we cook the food, we have a bargaining chip. Let’s use it.

Read more...

Only the Lawyers - and a few politicians -win

Between the primaries, the registration process and the judiciary’s self-induced implosion we are set for what will undoubtedly be historical elections in April 2011, at least for lawyers.

The registration process has come and gone – massively expensive, extremely tiresome and plagued with problems, both technical and political. Save for those who did not manage to register at all or who did not get to register as many times as they wanted to, we are all sighing with relief that it is over. But there are implications.

During the registration exercise there were stories of those who registered more than once and who were found with multiple voter registration cards on them and although INEC kept quiet about this issue, we would like to believe that when all the data ‘captured’ during the registration exercise is collected, those who registered more than once will be automatically flagged – since fingerprints do not lie (at least in most places). However what would be most reassuring is for INEC to publish the name/names of those found to have registered more than once – along with its publication of the 2011 the voter list – and make it clear that they are disqualified from voting during the 2011 elections. This way, political parties and the public can put at least this particular issue of multiple registrations firmly away and focus on other election irregularities. For instance…what is going to be done and what can be done about the under-aged voters who got away with registering? Unfortunately finger prints cannot tell us how old a person is so how is this particular problem going to be resolved? Section 10(2) of the Electoral Act clearly requires that people to be registered must come with identification which proves ‘identity, age and nationality’ but no one asked me for this when I was registering and all the times I went to the registration centers to monitor the process, no one was ever asked - understandably. To ask for identification would have resulted in the disenfranchisement of millions of Nigerians who have nothing to prove who they say they are. What a nation. And what a potential opportunity for a lawsuit questioning the legality of the almost 1 trillion Naira registration process.

The primaries have also come and gone but we are still talking about it. The list of parties’ candidates to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) changes as often as women in the market reach into their bras for change. Here today and gone tomorrow; maybe this is where some of the hidden costs of running for elections come in; you must have money to ensure your name remains on the list of candidates. So who is gaining from these changes? How are these changes magically happening? Maybe each party should publish the list they have given to INEC so that INEC will not be able to ‘change’ some of the names as alleged for instance in the case of the CPC gubernatorial candidate for Kano State? The flood of problems with irregularities in INEC’s execution prove that we were wrong to think democracy had scored a goal when Prof. Jega was appointed as the Chairman of INEC. We are always so concerned with the head and not with the body. The much celebrated Prof Jega is in …but what about the people he ‘inherited’? The real experts on electoral matters who have survived various chairmen of INEC? Can one person oversee everything that is happening in one place, across the nation? No – and that is why jubilation on his appointment was premature and actually a bit infantile. Nothing has really changed.

At the most recent count there are at least 64 lawsuits filed by aggrieved contestants who disagree with their parties' approved candidate lists for the April elections following disputed party primaries. The elections are barely two months away – how many of these cases are going to be resolved within this time frame? For those who think the lawsuits will make a difference, Section 87(11) of the Electoral Act takes away what Section 87(10) gives. While subsection 10 says aspirants with complaints may go to the Federal or State High Courts to seek redress, subsection 11 says the courts will not be able to stop the general election pending the determination of the lawsuits.

This is the cue for where the judiciary rushes in on a white horse to save the day – maybe by fast tracking the lawsuits or by dedicating specific courts to handle the cases arising from the primaries. No? They are not coming? Why not? Because they are neck deep in their own controversy arising from the 2007 election petitions which have only recently been resolved and their own alleged positioning in anticipation of all the lawsuits coming in 2011.

So who will save the elections and the electorate and ensure it does not get mired in endless litigation? No one. Lawyers will have a field day with fees; those who do not deserve to win the elections will ‘enjoy’ power for close to a full term before the judiciary ‘saves the day’; Prof Jega will be vilified and calls for his removal will reverberate around the world and the rest of us will look forward with hope to… 2015.

Published in Thisday's Lawyer on February 15 2011

Read more...

If you could get away with breaking the law...

At first I thought of this as a jurisprudential question which only lawyers would be interested in; then I realized that it is also a moral question which most Nigerians would be able to identify with. Because if you are a Nigerian living in Nigeria, then almost daily, you find yourself either observing or facing this dilemma…maybe we face it so often that we no longer recognize it as a dilemma. Maybe our response to this dilemma has been repeated so often that we no longer see that our response has become our character.

What am I talking about? I am talking about a lawless society. Not in our case knowingly lawless, but evolving slowly and taking on a defined shape which will be as hard to change as separating hair from chewing gum.

For most it starts gradually, not with big things but little seemingly insignificant ones…like throwing rubbish out of a car and onto the streets. Maybe you are going so fast you think no one will actually see you do it. Or better still you think, ‘the streets are already dirty so it makes no difference what else I add to it’. And so you do and it becomes a habit that you rarely think about.

Then on the way to or from work for those who live in the big cities, you watch fellow commuters speed past you driving against traffic while you stay in your –watching paint dry slow moving lane. You shake your head at them feeling superior but day after day, maybe even year after year…nothing changes. You obey the rules of traffic and stay on your lane and get to your destination late, and people who breeze past, powered by wrong, get home faster. Then one day, maybe you have had a hard day where anything that could go wrong, goes wrong and as you sit in stand still traffic you think to yourself…’just this once, I’ll drive headlong into oncoming traffic with my hazard lights on and get home early for a change’. It’s exhilarating. You cut out of your lane just as the person two cars in front of you is doing so and together you form your little convoy of brigands and soon you are home. After that, you never sit still in traffic again and it becomes second nature to do so. And so it continues with sir luck shining his beacon on you. You graduate to ‘borrowing’ company funds for a sister’s funeral (surely a good cause) especially since you shared part of it with your religious association and taking that thank-you-in-anticipation-of-the-contract-being-awarded gift and you never even notice that you have stopped having the ‘should I or shouldn’t I discussion with yourself.

At the other end of town is someone who is in a battle with his chi because despite what Chinua Achebe says, no matter how strongly he exerts himself to do something wrong, he just cannot get away with it. He puts one toe out of line and immediately gets a firm slap in the face. The day after his motorcycle license expires and he convinces himself that the odds are for him getting away with it until the next pay day…barely two intersections away from his home, the Vehicle Inspection Officers are all over him, he has to pay a fine, appear in court, and eventually looses his job because his boss wants no excuses and is tired of all the stories about motorcycle licenses.

When this person was younger and was preparing for his school-leaving certificate, many spoke confidently about facilitating their success in the exams. He decided to use this information wisely and prepared his exam aids carefully but unfortunately, only a few including him became the scapegoats for exam malpractice. His paper was cancelled and he was expelled and that was the end of a family’s dreams of finally joining the ranks of the educated.

It is easy to understand why some would think they were born to ‘escape the law’ and that no matter how many laws they deliberately and willfully break, they will never be brought to justice. However, they understand that this entitlement is only valuable and secure if those who were born not to ‘escape the law’ rarely transcend to the other side. And so they speak passionately about justice, law and order and equity but only for the benefit of giving those born not to escape the law with someone thing to look forward to. And it works.

Everyday, he who was born not to escape the law watches enviously as others go scot free for the very same thing he tries to do and gets punished for. Ironically, their invincibility gives him hope. Maybe one day, just one day he will be able to get away with what others get away with so easily.

Published in Thisday's The Lawyer on Feb 1 2011

Read more...

t’s not just the judiciary; it’s the entire legal system

A lot has been said and written lately about the Nigerian judiciary:
its issues, challenges and what needs to be done to fix things and
make things better. Just last week, in the editorial of Ms. Funke
Aboyade, We All Stand to Lose, she wrote in defense of the judiciary
in the wake of the missiles directed at it from Senator Omisore.
Everything she said is true but as she called on the Bar to ‘defend
the integrity of the Judiciary AS AN INSTITUTION’ I have two
questions. One, why do lawyers and Nigerians think that, in light of
the pervasive rot and consistent degradation of almost every thread of
our social and political fabric, the Judiciary would remain untouched,
pristine, the glowing beacon of hope, justice and integrity? And two,
do institutions make the men or do the men make the institution?

If you have never had cause to have any interaction with the legal
system (which I define for this purpose as the judiciary, the lawyers
and the administrative process of law including court administrators,
rules of procedure, law, enforcement etc.) then you are extremely
fortunate. Never mind if you have had to swallow a lot of pain and
inequity to avoid dealings with the legal system, you might still be
technically better of for it. As a lawyer and a party to a child
custody suit I have been curious enough to find out about the
experience of others within the Nigerian legal system and as such I
can speak about our collective experiences which can be adequately
captured in three truisms/sayings.

In Nigeria, justice delayed is not justice denied. Indeed we take
great pride in the fact that cases can take over 20 years to resolve
and we are not concerned that this practice is one of the reasons why
Nigeria remains at the bottom of the international ‘ease of doing
business’ index. A lawyer recently explained to me that because the
rules of procedure allow a defendant who has been served with a claim
42 days to file a defense, this means before the court can even begin
to look at the case, there is already a built in delay. And if the
defendant asks for more time, of course it will be granted because it
is necessary to be fair, never mind the plaintiff who has to wait.
This way, a matter which can be adjudicated within a week can take
years as the party who wants to avoid ‘justice’ just keeps taking the
maximum time offered and keeps asking for adjournments. As litigants
we hear about how over worked the judiciary is but I can’t help
wondering; if judges got through their cases a little faster maybe
they would not be overwhelmed with what are actually a backlog of
cases?

Two, the Nigerian legal system believes that we are all guilty until
proven innocent. That can be the only explanation for some of the
absolutely amazing court rules that we have. I’ll take just one
example: parties to a suit have to apply in writing for an order of a
court made specifically for them. Let me explain. Imagine you have a
child custody case which is taking the usual course of time a case
takes in Nigeria. So you request that since the party withholding the
child is comfortable with the length of time the case is taking, the
child be allowed to spend the voter registration imposed holiday with
the party who is seeking a more equitable situation. The court grants
the order on a Wednesday and says it is effective from Saturday
January 15 to Thursday January 27th. Saturday rolls around and the
order is not complied with. So you contact your lawyers and proceed to
having the following conversation.
‘How do we enforce this order that the court delivered?’
‘Hmmm, you have to wait because we have to apply on our law firm
letterhead paper for a signed copy of the order.’
‘Really why? The order was granted for my benefit, why do I have to
apply for it? ‘Those are the rules, we will apply on Monday.’

When the written application on letterhead is finally ready, what do
you know; the judge is unavailable to sign the order and will remain
unavailable for a week, thus making the order meaningless for its
purpose. Still trying to understand the reason for this rule that
parties have to apply for an order which the court granted them, a
judge explains that it is to ‘prevent fraudulent people from being
able to fake orders’. How about automatically preparing two copies of
the order, signed and dated, and asking the lawyers to pick up these
orders and sign a log book acknowledging receipt? Better still, how
about scanning the order and emailing it only to the parties to the
suit? Oh, our rules of evidence do no accept electronically generated
data so it is unlikely that it would want to use the medium that
everyone in the 21st Century use to communicate, thus effectively
shutting us in the dark ages as far as email, sms or God forbid the
information out there on the Internet is concerned. This means that
the system is so convinced that all Nigerians are fraudulent that it
will rather let an injustice happen over and over again than let one
person abuse the system.

And the third thing is our own special slant on attorney client
relationship – you can never be sure who your lawyer is really working
for (especially in child custody cases). We are a patriarchal society.
Fact. Children are considered the property of the father. Fact. The
preponderance of child custody cases are brought by women who have
been unlawfully denied custody of/access to their children. Fact.
Women are generally economically and socially disadvantaged – at least
in comparison to men. Fact. By deduction, this means men in child
custody suits can afford to pay off the women’s lawyers to stall, give
bad advice or just be plain negligent and unavailable. I have heard
this complaint in at least two different cases and I am sure there are
more but as Ms Aboyede quoted in the article ‘it is hard to prove
corruption’…maybe because paper receipts are not required for the
transaction and electronic transfers are not admissible.

The point is, it is not the judiciary alone which should be beaten up
and scrutinized (to no recognizable results one might be tempted to
add); the lawyers, the rules of procedure, the court administrators,
everyone and everything must come under the microscope. Other than the
judiciary however, only a few other parts of the legal system are
periodically in the news. A few months ago, right on schedule, we got
the annual ‘law school exam paper leak’ stories, then it was former AG
Aondoakaa being stripped of his ranking as a senior advocate of
Nigeria (a welcome rarity) but rarely do lawyers and court
administrators and their practices come under scrutiny.

Judges come from lawyers, lawyers come from students and students come
from society, bringing us to the issue of men and institutions. If
there are no honorable men can or will the institutions be honorable?
And can the institutions be honorable if the men within it are not?

The answer to me is clear – the judiciary and the entire legal system
cannot be in isolation of the state of the nation. If the state of the
nation is good, then the state of the judiciary and the legal system
will be good. What we have is a reflection of the society we live
in…we can’t all be covered in smut, violence and oppression and
somehow the legal system remains lily white. We need a total overhaul
of the technical aspects of the legal system and a re-education on the
essence and ethics of the system: to provide real justice, to be fair
and to be open and transparent. One of the first things you hear as a
student of law in the United States is that the American judicial
system would rather nine guilty people go scot free than to let one
innocent person suffer. We like to say justice is blind because it
means that justice does not recognize class, power, status, race,
ethnicity, religion – just right or wrong or what is fair and
equitable. In Nigeria we need justice and the entire legal system to
be blind to anything which will influence its decisions and at the
same time, we need eyes, binoculars and magnifying glasses to ensure
that the administration of justice is real and practical not a fairy
tale which hardly anyone (but the most die hard romantics including
myself) believes in anymore.

Published as Letter to the Editor of The Lawyer on February 1 2011

Read more...

Election Madness

“Shambolic and a mockery” – those are the words used to describe the recently concluded PDP primaries for the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Yes, no need to ask, it was the losers who described it as a sham and I am pretty sure that those who won think it was a wonderfully managed process. So far the news from the other parties is the same – chaotic, badly organized, not enough materials, holding delegates hostage, using fake delegates and on and on…and this is only the primaries. Some of the primaries went on through out the night and into the morning; no wonder there are not more women involved in politics. And this is not taking the violence, the assassinations, the bomb blasts and the maiming into consideration. Does the Minister of Foreign Affairs want to take back his indignation over Ambassador John Campbell’s prognosis that Nigeria’s democracy is not likely to survive the 2011 elections?

No one needs to be a prophet or a seer to tell that these elections are heading straight for the edge of a cliff and unless something changes quickly, we are all going to topple over and fall. My first inkling that these elections were not going to be different from past elections was the decision of INEC to ‘delegate’ the voter education campaign to the National Orientation Agency. Who? Exactly. Never heard of or from them before.

Every election is about administration. It is about keeping tracking, monitoring, accounting, checking and cross checking, timing, counting, verifying, delivering, checking and cross checking; it is about project management and somehow we just can’t seem to get elections right on any level. One definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Sort of like the way people in Kwara State keep selling their votes to the Sarakis’ for the short term gain of filling their stomachs for a few months (or however long a bag of rice lasts) and wondering why their State is barely developed save a few roundabouts and lots of banks.

It is this type of madness that keeps the Nigerian executive arm in the reiterative trap of hiring judges or academics as Chairmen of the Independent National Electoral Commission despite the sad track record of past chairmen in managing elections. Section 14 of the Third Schedule of the old 1999 Constitution is silent on any requirement apart from insisting that the Chairman must be no younger than 50 years old. So what is it about the responsibilities of the Chairman of INEC that makes judges and professors the ideal match? Are judges good at mobilizing? At keeping track of minute details such as the large number of polling booths and matching this to the voter registration centers and the number of people registered at each center and how that translates into the number of ballot papers each center needs? Are professors skilled at managing the political process? (Okay, there is so much rivalry and backbiting in academia that they just might be suited for this part of the job) Can a professor manage a large field force of over 1000 employees not including the contractors vying for jobs, the civil servants in his employment who are bent on doing things their ‘own way’ and the hundreds of volunteers and civil society organisations? I don’t think so. So why do we keep getting them to manage our electoral process? Because corruption is so engrained in our psyche we think the key to efficient and fair elections are so-called incorruptible men. Not so. Everyone is corruptible; we just need those who hold an extremely non negotiable high premium to their conscience. We need Field Marshalls and Generals, trained in the art of war campaigns and strategy, who know how to mobilize their battalions and make sure the ammunition is where it is supposed to be and the troops have their equipment and are primed to go.

This time last week, with only five days to the start of the voters’ registration process, the same registration process we are sacrificing a month of our children’s education for, we still had no idea where we were to go to get registered. The radio airways were silent, the newspapers bereft of any relevant information and not even a flyer was bobbing aimlessly in the wind. What are the arrangements? How long, approximately, would it take each person to register? What was the average wait time at each center? Did we need any identification to get registered?

On INEC’s website, under the menu on the left, ‘Publications’ has a link to “Registration Areas Nationwide’. The title is misleading. The link takes you to a Portable Document Format (PDF) file which lists the Wards under each Local Government without providing any addresses e.g., for Abia North Local Government some of the Wards are Osusu I, Osusu II etc. Let me put this in perspective using Eti Osa Local Government which has Victoria Island I and Victoria Island II. Now where on earth is the actual registration taking place within VI? Is it at Bar Beach? Or at Bonny Camp? Way to go INEC, now let’s see how long it will take to break down this information and actually provide addresses. In the meantime…wasn’t one of the reasons primary and secondary schools were closed because school buildings were going to be used? Then why is it so hard to share the address of these schools with us?

Professor Jega insisted that Nigeria needed to compile a new voters register because the entire basis of a free and fair election rested on this. If the preparations for the registration so far are anything to go by, with missing, stolen, now not stolen data capturing machines and the lack of basic information about the registration process then we can expect a shambolic mockery of elections in 2011.

We need to stop being so disorganised in our affairs and accept that if we do not stop doing things the ‘Nigerian’ way we are never going to move forward. There is still a little time to pull things around and stop acting mad – doing the same things over and over again and insanely thinking ‘e go better’. It is never going to get better if something does not change…so we are hopeful, waiting and watching.

Published in Thisday's The Lawyer on January 18 2011

Read more...

Sarah Jibrin: One vote against the world

I did not watch Sarah Jibrin’s address to the PDP delegates on Thursday January 14 2011 but when I first heard about it, it was being spoken about derogatively. The women talking about it said her lack of political astuteness embarrassed them. They expected her to have the sense to ‘declare’ for Jonathan (not Atiku) and thus align herself with power. Instead she sang about overcoming and secured only one vote; the vote she cast for herself.

My first and enduring thought about this was ‘were there no female PDP delegates’? Then other questions tumbled out. Did she not campaign (what match could she possibly be for the dollars allegedly disbursed by President Jonathan and Atiku Abubakar)? Would it have made a difference if in her address she spoke powerfully about the plight of Nigerian women in our society today? Did the female delegates not empathize with what Sarah Jibrin was trying to do? Did the delegates not know that since it was a secret ballot nobody would know how they had voted after they had safely collected their share of the dollars? (Apparently, there is honor amongst thieves).

Although women officially make up almost half (49%) of the Nigerian population, they constitute only a small fraction of the decision making process. Nigeria’s National Gender Policy of 2006 recommends a minimum of 35% representation of women in public office and I believe the wording ‘public office’ is deliberate. It is to make it easier for government to support this policy if they really wanted to by skipping the hurdles and prejudices of political participation and appointing women to positions where they can influence gender friendly policies. Today, generally accepted data says women make up only 7% of those appointed. Five years after the policy was finalised President Jonathan has 6 women in his cabinet - 15 percent of the Federal Executive Council; need we say more?

In politics, women do not fare any better and although some of the political parties pay lip service to keeping 30-35% of electable positions for women, this rarely translates into reality. Today, on the eve of the 2011 elections, only 8 out of 100 elected representatives are women. And if the recently concluded party primaries are any indication, the number of women in elected positions might be even lower after the April elections.

Why should women care about politics and representation?

We should care because what happens in our domestic lives is what translates into public life. Women and men say ‘when a woman runs for office, she is considered immoral’. News flash – whether we participate in public office or not we are still considered immoral. However, if we will not care for ourselves, if we are not tired of the disempowerment, discrimination and deprivation on every social, economic and political facet of our lives, then let us care for the sake of our children.

What future do we want for our daughters? Why must their education, inheritance, right to property, domestic rights all be subject to the whim of men even when the law favours them? What future do we want to leave for our sons? Why should they be used for political mayhem and destruction and yet be incarcerated for years without trial for flimsy reasons? Shot at by police at every turn, scoffed at by old politicians who never want to go away and sacrificed by a society which values an uneasy peace over the growth and development of its young? Why must our children struggle to get the questionable quality of education most Nigerians are condemned to and then spend years trying to get employed?

There is no better place on earth for us than here in Nigeria. There is growing unrest around the world and immigrants are finding it harder to settle and belong. We need to make Nigeria the haven we seek out in other parts of the world and women have a big role to play in making this happen.

Sarah Jibrin stood up to be counted to encourage women, young girls and even young men who have not fully swallowed the misogynist pill, to participate and aspire. It was not about winning but it should not have been such an absolute loss. We have more than 60 political parties and had only one female presidential aspirant. She should have received more votes to trigger the understanding that women who constitute the larger number of voters can vote as a block for politicians who care about the issues women care about. Just imagine…what if Sarah Jibrin had locked enough votes to be the tiebreaker between President Jonathan and Atiku Abubakar? Then she would have been in a more strategic position to negotiate for herself and for women. And for those who understand only Naira and Kobo, just think…maybe female delegates might have commanded a higher ‘fee’ for their vote. We need to start thinking more strategically. Should we vote for a person just because she is a woman? Not particularly. Should we vote for a person because she symbolizes something bigger than ourselves, a stand against oppression and a hope for the future? Yes, we should.

Published in ThisDay's The Lawyer Jan 25 2011

Read more...