Hundreds of women protested in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital on Monday to push for a bill that would add women-only seats in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Several African countries, from Senegal to Rwanda, have increased the number of women legislators by using quota systems.
Nigeria, which has no such system, only counts four women senators out of 109 and 16 women in the 360-member House of Representatives, according to the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), a local NGO.
Dubbed the “Special Seats Bill”, the legislation would add one woman-only seat for both the House and the Senate in each of Nigeria’s 36 states plus the Federal Capital Territory, though implementing the changes would require a constitutional amendment.
“We want the legislature to work for women,” said Dorothy Njemanze, one of the organisers, who said she had counted more than 1,000 demonstrators in attendance.
Women’s groups from across the country converged in Abuja, organising a caravan of buses, vans and a truck blasting up-tempo Afrobeats music that snaked through the wide boulevards of the planned city.
Advocates say that reserved seats would serve as a corrective to the financial barriers, entrenched gender roles and a domination of politics by male power brokers that keep women out of power in Africa’s most populous nation.
The caravan ended with the delivery of signatures in support of the legislation to a House committee holding a hearing on constitutional reform.
President Bola Tinubu’s Minister for women’s affairs, Hajiya Imaan Sulaiman-Ibrahim, has signaled support for the legislation.
However, the PLAC, in its legislative analysis, warned that constitutional amendments are “no walk in the park”, with two-thirds of the National Assembly and 24 state legislatures required to approve any changes.
Several similar attempts at creating reserved seats for women have failed in recent years.
“I want that seat, because tomorrow, I may be the one contesting” for it, Onu Ihunania, a 50-year-old civil servant and member of the caravan said.
A National Assembly with more women might better focus on women’s health and economic inclusion, said Nyiyam Ikyereve, 40, who travelled several hours from Benue State to join the protest.
The lack of women’s representation came to a head earlier this year when Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan was suspended from the chamber after she complained about sexual harassment.
The Senate President maintained that Akpoti-Uduaghan was suspended for a separate incident related to an argument that erupted in the chamber over her seating arrangement.
