A pro-democracy activist and former senator, Shehu Sani, says Nigeria needs radical electoral reforms if more women will be voted into political offices.
Sani, who represented Kaduna Central Senatorial District in the Eight Senate, stated this while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
According to him, the present political ecosystem does not favour women in occupying strategic positions to enable the country meet the 35 per cent affirmative action being canvassed by some women rights activists.
“There is a serious contradiction in the agitation for more opportunities for women in Nigeria.
“If it is being said that men and women are equal, then they have to face the equal rigours and chances with men in order to occupy very important positions.
“And if you say that women need preferential treatments, it means there is no equality.
“If we are to put it in proper perspective, if a woman is going to contest an election, she must come out strong to face the contest, unless we are saying that we are going to allocate seats for women.
“For instance, in every three senatorial districts, one should be left for women or for the House of Representatives, a certain number should be left for women, to make it easy for them,” he said.
Sani described the present political terrain in the country as men’s world.
“If you are a physically-challenged or a woman, they wave money for the purchase of expression of interest and nomination forms for you, but that is very insignificant when it comes to elections.
“If you want to contest election in the Nigerian sense, you need the backing of certain forces, especially if you are to come from a major political party.
“You need the backing of the power livers within that party and how many women can get that backing?
“Secondly, you need a lot of money and how many (women) have the money to settle political structures before they contest elections and settle political lords, pay delegates, political structures and pay this and that?
“Apart from the monetary aspect, will a woman be able to move along with thugs, embrace them and accommodate them?’’ he asked.
Sani said that a few women who made it to the National Assembly, such as Stella Oduah, Uche Ekwunife and Florence Ita-Giwa, had to become `men’ in order to succeed.
“I do not see the possibility of having many women in a very tough, challenging, rough, money-demanding, turbulent and stormy political system as we have it in Nigeria.
“For more women to make it, we need to do radical reforms. That is, let a law be there to back up the allocation of positions to women and once that is done, more women will be there.
“But the problem is that men might not be able to craft such laws and append their signatures on them,’’ he said.
Sani also said that most of the godfathers would not be willing to give chances to women for political contests in order to protect their interests.
“The godfather will prefer more rugged men that will be able to maintain that inheritance of his political dominance and control, and he can’t send a woman there,’’ he said.
The former senator said that his recent return to APC was not defection per se, as he had been a founding member of the party.
“Some of us left APC en masse to PDP and we also returned to APC en masse, but I happened to be the one in the news for that movement as if I was the only person.
“We established APC structures in Kaduna in 2014 and I emerged a senator and Suleiman also emerged senator for Kaduna North.
“Somewhere along the way, we had our differences and open confrontation and conflict with former Gov. Nasir El-Rufai and that led to serious setback for APC in Kaduna.
“Our main motive of leaving was to dismantle El-Rufai politically in Kaduna State and we were able to achieve that to a larger extent because the result of the elections held in 2023 showed that,’’ he said.
Sani said that the emergence of Uba Sani as governor and his appeal to those who left APC out of anger before the 2023 elections to return after El-Rufai had left paved the way for them to come back.
The politician, who described the governor as his childhood friend, said that the consequences of their exit from APC made the party to lose the presidential election in the state in 2023.
“President Bola Tinubu lost the election where El-Rufai was the sitting governor in 2023.
“The PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar, scored 554,360 votes; Tinubu got 399,273 while Peter Obi of Labour Party got about 200,000 votes.
“Because of our defection to PDP, the party won all the three senatorial seats, of the 14 federal house seats, PDP got nine, Labour Party two and APC three.
“Even at the governorship level, the gap between APC that won and PDP was 11,000 votes,’’ he said.
Sani said that if El-Rufai was a strong political force, APC would have cleared all the positions in the 2023 general elections, ‘but the party performed woefully with him as sitting governor’. (NAN)
