 We're glad to know you're still there and watching the run-up and it's exciting right now. We're drawing closer and closer to 2023 and our concern is that under international standards both men and women should have equal rights and opportunities to everything worldwide, most especially to participate fully in all aspects and at all levels of political processes. Globally, women constitute over half of the world's population and contribute in vital ways to societal development generally and in most societies women assume some key roles which are mother, producer, home manager and community organizer, social, cultural and political activist and all these many roles mentioned. The last has been endangered by women movement. Nigeria has been recording low participation of women in both elective and appointed positions. This is growing concern to many Nigerians however consented efforts have been made by government and non-governmental organizations to increase the level of participation of women in politics. And of course these are the issues that concerns that presently we're going to be looking at and of course despite women constituting 50% of population and about 51% of votes in elections. They do not enjoy their full political rights as their male counterparts. Overall political representation in government is below 7% according to unavailable status. Also women have not still attained the recommended 30% seats in government as prescribed by the Beijing platform of action to which Nigeria subscribes. And it was not until 1979 that women in northern Nigeria exercised their voting rights or began to exercise their voting rights and this implies that they could not contest or contest for political positions nor participate in choosing their political leaders. I mean until 1979. Yeah but also worrisome it's not only that it's happening in Nigeria in Iran right now a footballer is marked for hanging because he was canvassing for women's rights. But we may not be as concerned with the things happening in Iran as we are concerned in Nigeria even though sometimes when things like this happen people can be pointing fingers and saying it has happened here why can't it happen here. We don't want us to get into that situation where someone has to even be the one to talk. Everybody should just know that everybody has the rights. But we are not the ones who are going to talk about this today. We have Mary Ogweji a lawyer and politician who has just joined us who will be talking about this. Hello and welcome to the run up Mary. It's still morning here maybe you are elsewhere you are not in Nigeria but in Nigeria it's still morning. Yes it is. Welcome Mary. Okay now a lot of people think that women have been marginalized politically do you share that notion as well? Absolutely because the statistics actually show this we have less than 6.7 or even 7% of women representation in Nigeria. I think the number of senators we have in Nigeria are 8 as opposed to the 109 seats. So we have 101 men in the Senate and we just have 8 women actually that are senators and under the House of Representatives we have just 13 women representing different states. I think 360 House of Assembly and House of Reps members and House of Assembly across the whole states we have just 21 and I think the total number is 400 plus which shows that we actually are less than 7% and in Nigeria I think CDD statistics shows that we actually women are like 50.1 or 50. something which shows that we are even above like the men population and we should be given a place at which we are given more space is in the political space. Alright lots of conversations have come up around this marginalization of women politically and then you've given us statistics which is nice I mean you mentioned numbers but then who do you think is to blame? Is it that the women are not as enthusiastic as they should be about political offices or coming out to vie as much as they should or they are not enough level playing ground for them to thrive in politics? Who is to blame? I think everybody has its own faults first of all the society that we live in Nigeria is a patriarchal society and by that I mean it's men dominated and also gender roles actually affect women's participation in politics because generally the society has actually given the role of parenting the whole of home building to women and have left the leadership roles for the men and we also have our religious factors affecting us religiously we are always taught in churches that the man is the head and whether we like it or not our religious and cultural beliefs actually builds up to what we have today even the constitution the foundation of the constitution and many of our legislations that we actually practiced today found this bearing from the laws and religious and our cultural laws so we can't actually take religion out of it and because many people actually misquote these words to mean that women should actually not take leadership roles outside the church instead of them preaching in the churches I'm going to say church because I'm a Christian I don't really know so much about the Muslim faith but I can see that very little few Muslim women are actually taking political positions too but as a Christian you hear them telling you as a woman you have to be submissive you have to listen to your husband your husband is first in the your husband is first takes first place in your life and so whatever your husband tells you if your husband does not support you to go into the political field you won't be able to actually go there and rather than preaching things like okay when Jesus Christ died for example it was the women that first that he appeared to first at least those kind of teachings will actually motivate women leadership roles and besides that we also have our legislation our legislation is not helping us like the 35 percent affirmative action that was denied us is actually very alarming we are not asking for 50 percent we are asking for just 35 and even the national um gender policy that's Nigeria I heard you talking about the Belgium and I granted that was 1995 women and conference or so I think that was when it happened Nigeria actually subscribed to recent I think it was 30 percent that was giving us affirmative action Nigeria came and said 35 percent under their national um gender policy and today they are actually having an issue implementing it we are only saying implement what you have actually said you are going to implement and it's now an issue and even when the women trust fund actually sued the government to implement it and won the case at the federal high court the government went to appeal so then you ask do this government does this government actually have the love for women participation in politics because it's very amazing when you hear political speeches you hear people saying um the political parties will tell you that they have given the women spaces like PDP for example has 35 percent affirmative action written in their constitution but we don't get to see them so I think we have an implementation problem and the women too we have issues with women one we have issues with other women but um other women supporting women and you won't really blame them because for a society that have been under male leadership and like I said before are cultural and religious background affects us a lot so a woman we only support another woman if her husband or the people around her the people that she sees as how like put it as her head tell her that okay let's support this person that's the only way you see a woman going to support another woman and which is very rare every man will prefer to support a man you hear some people saying that they can never allow a woman rule over them god forbid you hear some people even saying that it's better for them to go and commit suicide and die than for a woman to become um to get leadership positions and then again whether we like it or not if you say we are practicing democracy in Nigeria then we need to practice democracy indeed and democracy is about inclusiveness as far as I'm concerned Nigeria women hold women generally across the world we hold 50 percent of the sky and you cannot say you are practicing true democracy when a large number of people that are numbering almost 50 percent are marginalized and which happens to be women and another problem we have with women is that a lot of women are actually not coming out and I always tell my fellow women whenever we get to speak or sit down I would say if you want to be selected you need to participate because we need knowledge we need to be in the system you don't expect anybody to come and pick you out of the system because now my fear of implementation now is the fact that if they give this 35 percent affirmative action how many women are there readily available to actually take up this 35 percent and if there is no chance for an immediate implementation it will now become another demand law again and that's why I encourage women before you can be selected you need to come out you need to participate when you participate and you get selected then we cannot elect you we cannot elect you in your house so one of the problems that we have also is women participation now you cannot blame them it's because of the society women are getting to politics are actually being called different kinds of names we are actually stigmatized you hear them calling you maybe a woman of little virtue or somebody a prostitute we are actually called different kinds of being because of the ascribed negativity that we give to politics here because most times politicians are seen as evil people people that have very little consent about human rights because of the many promise and failed because of the many promise and failed issues that we've been having in the past so as a woman once you and you know generally many many people see that it's okay for a man to actually have like a bad character but as a woman who ordinarily has the nature of nature naturally they see it that you are an extremely bad person to be going into politics and nobody would want to be ascribed such a status so I think all these are not actually affecting women's participation okay well 35 percent sometimes I find it difficult to fathom what it will look like because in elective positions for instance you cannot control the will of the people it is people that vote for the person who has who is vying for that elective position which also includes women that are part of the voters now is there something that the women are doing wrong or it's something that needs to be done more to make sure that people see the women as those who are worthy enough and even the women themselves seeing themselves as let's do for ourselves at least this one time or these two times and all that because you cannot give 35 percent to women and then there are no women to come out and even if there are women that will come out the women themselves will not even vote for the women so what is lacking what needs to be done to change this narrative I think one of the things that are lacking is education we need proper education we need to educate the public in general not just the fellow women we need to educate the men too because generally if you are saying okay women should get political power you need to tell people what are the advantages like for example I think was it's last month or so there was an NGO that actually went to build a borehole for a community for women so that it to ease their water supply and when they finished and erecting the borehole nobody went there to get water and when they found out they got to ask questions like why were they not getting water they now said that the place where they put the borehole was not convenient because they normally go to fetch water at a particular place for bonding reasons and for other reasons and so that particular spot where it got where it kept the water was not good for them and that gets to show that women we have our own we have our personal issues we have our differences we have reasons they may they may not be able to relate with us on the same level but a fellow woman can like for example some of the laws that we have against women like the three years before a police woman a single policeman gets married which he must actually must have stayed two years and after staying those two years she must actually take permission from the police commissioner before she gets married and she must submit records of her husband we have the penal code section 55 that actually gives the man the right to beat up his wife we have different sections we have them even the NDLEA acts there are a lot of acts and there are a lot of laws that are actually against us as against women and before we'll be able to as punch these laws we need more women we need more women voices we need many he's for she's we need to educate the society only women alone won't be doing it and how do we do that by creating specific for example if you give women appointments appointments one of the reasons why the society don't like votes for women is because of money you know elections we can't take money out of elections in Nigeria we are not even talking about even sipping will I say sipping maybe the political party officials and the rest I'm not talking about even sipping them we are talking about the general logistics we have over like we have thousands of them polling units you need to send your representatives there you need we need we need money for a lot of things in politics and because women have not been given good spaces even for jobs we are just expect them to harness or has just money from and a lot of political parties are not giving support but if you are able to educate them and tell them okay this are the advantages of women getting there tomorrow your daughter is going to be in that position and the mistakes that you normally make is that we forget that whatever we do today affects everybody affects every one of us because if you are cutting a tree you never can tell where that tree is going to fall tomorrow maybe if you land on your daughter maybe you hear some men they'll tell you that your wives can never work but when you tell them that okay would you want your daughter to work they'll say yes they cannot spend that kind of money on their daughters and not let them work so that means that there is hope and their daughter is a woman and so that means that there is a way we can actually speak to them to allow women then I think another issues another issue that women have generally is that we come into the political system with competition like we are trying to be competitive knowing that everything is against us we are supposed to be complementary that is how to get you don't come into somebody's don't come into a place that is dominated by you don't come into a military space that's called dominated by a particular set of people and you now come with an axe and you are just three or four and you expect that you are going to win the battle when you come you come as an ally you come as a friend you come to compliments I think women should actually use their family most times try to be like the men in the political spaces rather than us take charge rather than us take advantage of our feminine of our feminine nature there is nothing there's nothing wrong in actually negotiating that the political time for a political meeting should be brought down to 7 p.m rather than 12 a.m or 1 p.m but most times he's here when I say even if it's 1 a.m we'll be there at the meeting that is not where our strength lies our strength is in realizing that okay we see have children to take care of at home and because of that we want this meeting to be held 7 we are not going there to fight you are coming here to say okay I know that yes people are doing well and we know that you are doing some things and but there are some things you are not getting right but crying out loud we as women actually did step some spaces but in order to do this we are not here to fight you people we are not here to say you are not doing well but at least take us along at least if women are given positions like um appointments in different and space at least to make them to pick up if we are being made like deputies at least for a start I'm not saying that is good enough but at least for a start is a starting point for us being that's right now as you level of women participation is politics is very low so we really need to be strategic rather than competitive at this point Mary just just a moment you you have rendered all of us evangelists to go now and preach the gospel to the people but you keep mentioning the advantages of having a woman in politics or in leadership positions give us some of these advantages of having a woman in an elective position or a position of power okay I already like kind of explanatory gave one of the reasons like some of these laws that actually discriminate against against women you know most of the men when you tell them about these laws they may not be able to relate with us at same um points but when they say okay you are telling a woman that okay before she gets into um the before she gets married in the police for she must take two years we are the ones that actually have um biological clocks running down men actually don't have that issue so when you tell when a woman goes and she sees that kind of loss she will be able to give very good reasons why those kind of laws should be expunged like beating women for example we are the ones that feel the pain a woman may be pregnant and you beat her and if you beat her she loses the pregnancy only a woman knows what she feels to lose the pregnancy so we relate with each other and that's on one side and women generally we are meant to not show you cannot tell us that every great man that's every great man that we see in leadership position actually came from our house and who runs the house the woman so you cannot tell me that will be good at running homes and won't be good at running nations because whether we like it or not when those when men are stressed and they come back home the woman is the person that gives some good gives him good advice and tries to calm him down so women have this the women have this way of being able to give like an equity balance to things and because of our nature that's why it says that women generally seek their feminine nature as they are to an advantage rather than try to be like the men because you will never be able to compete you will never be best at being somebody else so we should try to be ourselves and try to win by being women and not try to be win by trying to act like the men we should take our positions women generally they are meant to not show once a woman gets into any place for example let's say if two men are fighting and the woman comes in the middle they'll say ah because of this woman I don't want to hit her because generally men just have this feeling that women are very fragile and you see before you know those fights are already has been halted and you see some men they won't want to insult themselves or show themselves in front of the woman this is just social reasons anyway so you're gonna have to you're gonna have to mention a lot of things that are challenges facing women in politics and you've also mentioned that how how that you know women participation in politics is poor due to most of these reasons that you churned out to us this morning so my question is because we're actually rounding how if you got that vantage position and you have all these women that you need behind you what would you do differently what would I do differently if I get the position I will actually relate because representation when you talk about representation you are not talking about representing yourself you are representing a constituency representing people and the mistakes some of our leaders make is that they don't even have knowledge of the positions that we hold so the first thing I'm going to do is that I'm going to reach out to my people what is our problem what is really the issues what do people want which what are we going out first to speak about if you carry people along because whether we like it or the problem with our politicians these days is that they forget that they are deaf as in at representing people they go there as they represent themselves you have full of ego and they don't even do the right things but as a woman I will go back to my society and I will ask them what do you think what are the what are the things we should put forward what is the problem what are we are going to put it in preference and when I'm doing that I'm not going to go there and start promising bridges or promising roads where there is no I'm going to make sure that I put a strategic step and I make strategic make strategic policies and make sure okay like for example you hear some persons expecting a house of rep or house of assembly member to actually come and build roads that is not the work of house of rep or house of assembly member it's for the house of rep and house of assembly member is supposed to bring out laws and policies that we help so I'm going to bring out laws and policies that will help my people for example we are suffering from flurry headers clashes in my place so what are those things that are going to actually help those are those kind of policies that are those are the kind of policies I want to make on behalf of my people then for example if I'm the local government chairman I would definitely try to make sure that okay they are good roads they are I would try and invest in social investment and also use my position to actually reach out to different NGOs and see how they can actually come and bring their good view to my people and aside that if you train a woman today if you train a woman today you are motivating other women and other girls being that we are in a society that women representation is very poor so by giving me that opportunity you have given that girl that's mindset that you can become what this woman is actually right now so to motivate a lot of women and the woman who is in position is going to be more enlightened and that enlightenment is going to reach down to her children that's why you also hear the phrase train a woman train the nation all right thank you so much mary for coming on the run-up this morning it's been quite amazing and very enlightening speaking with you thank you so much thank you very much it was nice I was speaking with you too thank you for coming young girl you seem to have something we are all evangelists now but we cannot say enough you know we cannot we cannot say enough when it comes to telling people that we have equal rights and there are some things that women can do even better than men we just have to identify them but a key thing from what you were saying and from what we've observed over the years is that the women have to build their self-confidence on them in themselves so that you have to be there like my people you know don't get me to save you don't get me to save you but it's everywhere not just my people they say you cannot crown an absent king because the crown has to go on a head and when the head is not there you cannot crown that person so you have to come out and women to stand with the women it will do us a lot of good you go to churches there are more women I don't know about the most I think it's you go to a lot of places there are more women I don't know about the statistics of the the whatever body has been counting us but I think women might even be more than the men how can that kind of a population not make its impact felt it's the orientation that we have women have been thought to be quiet to not be seen to not be heard and you know the society curves that and makes it look like submission it makes it look like obedience meanwhile that is timidity that is shutting down it is an orientation that we've served the women over the years generations after generations like she said it cannot be done overnight we need to start reversing that mindset we need to start reorientating our women making them understand that they they they need to be heard they can be heard they can be heard they can lead because the society agree with me or not have made it you know made it more popular for people to feel that leadership positions are for the men actually I think where women belong is even better we are in the directional position the bible says we are the neck now we're neck carry head go ego go well that's just for another day you see even though the time is going but you see a lot of societies that I know actually respect women and give them positions even as chiefs it's not a matter of argument that I'm trying to put up now so the thing is I ask myself all the time this society that they have said have made has made sure that women don't get heard and all that where is that society it's not in the west they say it is african in the society I come from women lead like traditionally women lead they have their own women and when they decide things the community either does it or nothing moves again so I don't know when they talk about women where did the mindset come I always ask myself this have you heard the word propaganda by who because it's not my community for instance I don't know if it's a wine it was just a name that is what it is not just a name as a why is not just a name as a why is actually the woman king but that's that's conversation for another day because we need to go on this quick break and the news will come up at noon when we return we'll probably might have to touch on this again before we move on but stay with us the run-up will be back