Yesterday,Sunday March 8, was International women day. The theme for 2015 international Women Day is Make It Happen . The UN has been declaring an annual equality theme for many years. What difference has this made in the lives of women?.
Or better put what difference have women themselves made when given the opportunities to serve? My annual question is; Women; Whence The Difference? This year’s Women’s Day is holding at a time of great political challenges for our country. We are in a transition from a civil to civil rule. There are cynics and pessimists who see political doom. Will women make a difference, usher in optimism and political hope?. How will the women make free and fair election happen in the spirit of this year’s gender equality theme; MAKE IT HAPPEN?
Given the increasing level of violence and personalization of political disagreements, cynics are already compiling ‘evidences’ to prove their pessimism. Interestingly most cynics and perpetrators of violence, who are bent on fuelling dooms-day scenario, are mainly men and men only. Women, Women activists and women politicians in general must prove cynics wrong by challenging the nation with politics of difference. Women can and must effectively bring a different perspective into politics based on their experiences, rich heritage of struggles, resistance and optimism. In any case, different perspective is what gender-activists promised.
History of Nigerian women and indeed women worldwide is very rich in experiences from which we can find insight and even solutions to our present-day seemingly intractable political problems.
As early as 1929, women fought side by side with men to demand for independence from British Colonial rule. We can recall “Egba Women Riot” under late Mrs. Ransome Kuti (mother of legendary Fela Anikulapo Kuti) who rose up to demand for democratization of Colonial Native Authority. We can recall “Aba Women’s Boycott” in which women in the East opposed gender-insensitive colonial taxation policy, an opposition that snowballed into greater struggle for independence from the British predators. In the North we can recall the battle of legendary Hajia Gambo Sawaba who at enormous sacrifices to her well-being opposed the tyranny of male-dominated political process. These women, (May their souls rest in peace) cut across present day artificially male created regional/religious divide, precisely because their preoccupation was all-inclusive and meant to serve humanity. Even as recent as last week, we saw how the leadership of National Council of Women Societies (NCWS) commendably joined the NLC leadership to oppose the move by the National Assembly to repeal Anti-Corruption Act. The successes of past NLC Conferences until the recent unfortunate one were due to active participation and support of female members.
These are the rich heritage and contemporary experiences women must bring to bear on our increasingly stressed suffocating polity and economy.
Women must promote issues in politics as distinct from personalities and candidates. Issues begging for attention of our numerous candidates include wealth-generation, re-industrialization, electricity supply, poverty eradication, health, collapse of education, housing crisis, lawlessness and disorderliness, violence-free elections, anti-corruption, peace and fair and just world. In place of candidates (in which many are now for a kobo), women should promote candid programmes. Instead of “Fund Raising Dinners” (as if elections are all about money and eating), women should promote “Manifestos Presentation Fora”. Instead of “fire for fire” in politics, women should promote “ideas for ideas”, “issues for issues”. Instead of politics as war, (in which women are being turned into instant widows), women should change the macho-image of politics to that of enterprise for development and welfare. It should be WELFARE and NOT WARFARE.
Nigeria is totally imperilled if either by omission or commission, women join in the present obscenely advertised madness of the male political elite, the manifestations of which include political blood-letting, corruption, fuel scarcity, water shortage, energy failure, robbery, ad-infinitum.
In place of pessimism and despair, women must raise the banner of optimism and hope. We don’t need ‘iron’ ladies who will out-do men in their already discredited rough-shoulder macho-politics of greed, grab-grab and hack-down-the opponents. On the contrary, we need women that are knowledge-driven, sober and humble enough to forge consensus in the areas of development and poverty eradication.
Sadly we are yet to see much of politics of difference on the part of our female folk. This democratic dispensation has been commendably gender-sensitive. Relatively, we have more women in the executive and legislators than we had under dictatorship. ‘Yet we are yet’ to reap the dividends of women participation.
Women can only live up to the great challenge of politics of difference if they deepen their knowledge of their past, present and future. This calls for constant education and mass struggles with all other progressive forces of change, development and peace.
The bane of the present male-dominated polity is that it is scandalously short in memory and empty in its present form. Women must learn from the past that great female names that have endured are rooted in integrity, courage personal sacrifices, commitment to principles and NOT indulgence, greed, carpet-crossing, corruption, violence and thuggery. Women should MAKE IT HAPPEN; free and fair election devoid of violence.
ISSA AREMU mni
