Hillary Clinton in 2016 during a concession speech had said: “To all the little girls who are watching, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.”
This statement is not a witty statement but one that is being manifested amid virulent allegations of marginalisation of women, and low participation of women in politics all over the world. Nigeria is definitely no exception. As the girl child rises to the occasion of leadership, only a few have been able to break the shackles and thrive in various spheres of life, particularly in politics.
Women are major stakeholders in the development project of any society. Globally, the issue of women marginalisation and low participation in political leadership and decision making has been attracting a lot of attention from scholars.
Although women and men have different biological and physiological make-up, the former may share common features with men in terms of educational qualifications, socio-economic status, occupation among others; yet, they are marginalised in virtually all spheres of public life. In many African countries, such as Nigeria, obnoxious social norms, political exclusion and economic lop-sidedness dictate the presence and voice of women in public life.
According to 2006 Nigerian population census figure, women constituted 49percent of the total population, but there has been a gross gender gap between men and women, especially in political representation, economic management and leadership.
It is therefore, important to acknowledge and commend amazons who, by sheer doggedness, have successfully challenged the status quo and are taking up political leadership roles.
Two of such women in recent times are Uche Ekwunife and Stella Oduah, two Anambra States amazons, who have just been re-elected and elected (as the case may be) as members of the upper legislative chamber of the National Assembly, the Senate.
Few days back, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced Stella Oduah and Uche Ekwunife as the winners and senators-elect, to represent Anambra North and Anambra Central senatorial districts, respectively, after beating their contenders in the just concluded 2019 presidential and national assembly elections in Anambra State.
Oduah and Ekwunife are two dogged fighters, who have fought to stay relevant in the Nigerian political scene for many years now. In Anambra, the two women have never allowed themselves to be intimated by their male counterparts, usually considered as ‘politically supreme’.
Oduah, a serving senator (2015-2019) and senator-elect (2019-2023), was born on January 5, 1962 and hails from Akili-Ozizor in Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State. She received her Bachelors and Masters Degree (in Accounting and Business Administration) in the United States, before returning to Nigeria in 1983 to join the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). She is married to a former Minister of Works, Chris Ogiemwonyi, who hails from Edo State.
Oduah of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was declared winner by polling 113,989 votes to defeat 20 other candidates; Emmanuel Chinedu of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) came second with 59,937 votes and Nelson Onubogu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged third with 11,995 votes.
While reacting to her victory, Oduah said that her re-election for second tenure was a proof of God’s love for her and her people.
The Senator, who promised to sustain her quality representation in the Red Chamber, said: “It is a duty to further improve the livelihood of the people of my senatorial district.”
Her active political career started in 2011, when she played critical role in the political campaign of former President Goodluck Jonathan, where she served as his campaign’s director of Administration and Finance.
Consequently, her role in Jonathan’s election as president earned her a ministerial slot, and she was appointed as a minister, and was sworn in on July 2, 2011. She was deployed to the Ministry of Aviation on July 4, 2011, where she served for about three years.
Oduah’s ministerial position was threatened following the several controversies ranging from highly inflated purchase of BMW bullet-proof cars without following due process as well as purportedly lying about obtaining MBA degree from St Paul’s College, which trailed her leadership in the aviation ministry.
These controversies led to abrupt termination of her duties as Nigeria’s Minister of Aviation on 12 February 2014. On leaving her position as the minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Oduah was not deterred as she continued the political struggle but this time, she decided to go back to the he father’s state to seek the consent of her people to represent them in the upper chamber of the National Assembly, when it was obliviously difficult for a woman to become politically relevant at that level in Anambra.
This struggle, no doubt, has earned her another slot (second term) in the upper chamber of the National Assembly, and this, observers believed, is a very commendable achievement.
On her part, Uche Ekwunife, a former senator, who represented Anambra Central Senatorial District under People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and served in the 8th Assembly, was first in the red chamber of the National Assembly between June 2015 – 2016.
Ekwunife lost her senatorial seat in 2016 after she was sacked from the Senate in 2015 by Victor Umeh, an incumbent senator, through an Appeal Court judgment. Her election was challenged in court and in December 2015, her seat declared vacant for switching from one political party to the other. Her senatorial seat was threatened as she was not able to get her then political, PDP, to back her for the by-election for her former seat.
The Appeal Court judgment did not deter her as she vowed to return to the upper legislative house in 2019, a dream she fulfilled last week, when INEC declared her Senator-elect for the Anambra Central senatorial district after the 23 February 2019 National Assembly elections.
Ekwunife’s political career has been characterised by switching from one political party to another such that she has moved to at least four different parties. She was originally a card-carrying member of the PDP, which is the platform with which she won the bid to represent Anaocha/Njikoka/Dunukofia federal constituency in the House of Representatives in 2007.
In 2010, she defected to the Progressive People’s Alliance (PPA) and aspired for the governorship of Anambra State. After she lost that election, she moved to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and returned to the House of Representative on the platform of the party in 2011.
In 2013 also, Ekwunife sought the ticket of APGA to contest for Anambra governorship election but was defeated by Governor Willie Obiano in the primaries, and this led to her return to PDP. She won the ticket of the PDP for the 2015 Senate election and was elected to the Senate.
However, the joy of this victory was cut short by the court ruling, which insisted that PDP should not be allowed to be part of the rerun. This was how she lost her seat to Victor Umeh of APGA. This resulted to her moving to the All Progressives Congress (APC) to contest election but she failed as Sharon Ikeazor, who was purportedly said to have been with Muhammadu Buhari camp before her was favoured for the ticket.
Surprisingly, she got the APC ticket to contest for Anambra Central senatorial district, to the amazement of many. This generated controversies as one of the aspirants vowed to fight it out with her in the courts, a decision that might have led to her returning to the PDP, the platform on which she won the 23 February National Assembly election.
Reacting to the staying power and the fighting spirit of the amazons, Abiola Akiyode-Afolabi, chairperson of Transition Monitoring Group and Founder of Women Advocates Research and Documentation Centre, a non-profit organisation told BDSUNDAY that the election of women into the Senate is a good development, especially as some of the women being elected are returning, where some men could not get their tickets back.
“It shows that gradually the narrative is changing and people are getting to understand that women are capable for any position,” she said.
“If you look at some of those women elected, they come back to their communities to hold community parley because some of the things missing in our politics today is that people in power are far away from their constituency but research that we have done shows that most of the women who are in political positions in Nigeria are often times very close to their constituency. If the political system does not remove women from the political arrangements, often times they get their tickets,” Akiyode-Afolabi explained.
She emphasised that it is important for the country to also hold these women accountable, especially on gender equality issues. “Some of them did not stand up for gender in the last administration. We do hope that this time around, we will get a huge number of them to commit to ensuring that lives of women and girls are prioritised in Nigeria. They must identify that fact that they are first women before they become politicians,” she said.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
