By Justina Auta
A coalition of gender groups on Thursday commenced a hashtag campaign advocating for the reintroduction of the five gender bills that were rejected by the 9th National Assembly to further safeguard rights of women and vulnerable groups.
The group, #constitutionwomenwants, led by Women Advocates Research and Documentation (WARDC), supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Palladium, launched the advocacy campaign and hashtag in Abuja.
The advocacy campaign and hashtag is for a series of online and offline activities, including social media campaigns, to draw more attention on the need to reintroduce the five rejected gender bills.
Dr Abiola Akiyode- Afolabi, the Founder and Executive Director, WARDC, said: “Women’s leadership and political participation are crucial for advancing gender equality and inclusive governance.
“The movement is growing and people are getting more involved and the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives has been speaking about the gender bills, so we hope that we will be able to maintain that relationship and convince members of parliament.
“We have two assignments at this event, one is to hashtag campaign #afgirmativeaction and #reconsider5genderbills, and the second is to relaunch the signature campaign on the gender bills which was started earlier.”
Afolabi explained that the campaign seeks to raise one million signatures across the country supporting the reconsideration of the five gender bills.
She added that the campaign would ignite public discourse through the hashtags and signature campaign launch, targeting stakeholders, including political leaders, legislators, women in politics and the general public.
Rep. Benjamin Kali, the Deputy Speaker, House of Representatives, said the campaign was a better strategy that the women are adopting in current review for the 10th assembly.
Kalu, represented by Katu Simon, his Special Assistant on Strategy and Programme Development, said: “I think that the five bills need more enlightenment to their purpose.
“Quite a number of people, even some of the legislators, didn’t get to understand them until it got to the floor of the House.
“So I think if there’s anything that should be done now and should be done better, is the aspect of educating not just the legislatures but people within the country to understand the value of these bills.”
Ene Obi, former Country Director, ActionAid, while highlighting the efforts made during the Occupy National Assembly campaign on the five gender bills, observed the role of the media in promoting the campaign.
“The media was with us throughout the four weeks of occupation, they were there and they gave all the prominence; it was a battle.
“One thing we need to note is that in many conversations with the members of the National Assembly, they asked what we did before.
“We did a lot of things but it was not enough before the bills were presented. Now we are going to make another presentation of the bills, we need to do more.We need to do a lot of sensitisation.
“Through WARDC work and the coalition, we are trying to gather signatories and that is why we have the launch today and we want to work together.”
“I am calling on all women to let them know that when women and girls go out again to occupy the National Assembly and even the presentation of the bills in all houses of the National Assembly, you should get up to do something.
“The bills we are talking about is not just about women but about humanity so it’s about human rights, social justice and so we are hoping that we will do better,” she said.
The campaign aims to ignite public discourse through the hashtags and signature campaign launch. Targeting various stakeholders, including political leaders, legislators, women in politics and the general public.
The occupy National Assembly campaign is an advocacy towards the representation of women at all levels of governance which the group said is abysmally poor.
The coalition consists of WARDC, Womanifesto, National Coalition on Affirmative Action, (NCAA), Gender and Constitution Reform Network, (GCRN), SAGE and Gender Mobile.
They noted that in the executive, no female President, Vice-President or Governor has ever been elected.
They said the situation is similar in the legislature, as only about 13 out of 360 seats in the House of Representatives, and eight out of 109 seats in the Senate, were held by women among many other concerns.
The gender bills include the Bill to provide special seats for women at National Assembly, affirmative action for women in political party administration – 35 percent of executive positions.
Another is the bill seeking to grant citizenship to foreign-born husbands of a Nigerian woman.
Already, a Nigerian man’s foreign-born wife is automatically a Nigerian citizen.
