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By Akpan David, Calabar
Stakeholders have reasoned that despite their campaigns since the Beijing women’s Convention in China to implement the 35% Affirmative Action to accommodate women in government businesses without success, then their advocacy for a Special Seats Bill shall suffice.
They have emphasized more importance on the special Seats Bill and why the call for it should be louder since the numbers of women in state and federal parliaments are decreasing.
One of the advocates for the Special Seats Bill, Dr MacFarlane Ejah who is Country Director of
International Training Research and Advocacy Project and Policy Analyst who was a resource person during the Gender And Development Action, (GADA), one day media roundtable in Calabar, said that when the National Assembly passes the Bill next week, it will be a win-win situation for women.
The media roundtable was to explore ways for the media to sustain momentum around the Special Seats Bill for women.
Ejah and other stakeholders lamented the very poor visibility of women in parliamentary representation as well as general governance.
Ejah noted that amongst leading democratic countries in Africa, Nigeria has less than four percent women representation whereas Rwanda, Senegal and others have much higher statistics of female lawmakers in their different parliaments.
“Look at women participation in policy formulations in Nigeria, their developmental index is low. But in other African countries, their numbers are higher than ours.
“So the idea of the special seats bill is that since the 35% is not working, and people are fighting it, we should support women in advocating for special Seats to be reserved for the women,, so that the number of women is increased, not even on a 35% basis, but let’s have some support so that the voices of women will begin to speak.
“When passed into law, the special seats bill will run on a temporary basis for 16 years”, he said.
Members of the House of Representatives are to vote on the Bill on 9th and 10th of December 2025.
Ejah said that upon the passage of the Bill the battle will be to get it signed into law.
Ejah stated that th bspecial seats Bill is not seeking to replace the 35% Affirmative Action
“The 35% affirmation is standing on its own”, he stressed, “ We are signatories to the Beijing Conference, and other conventions, which talked about 35% for women. So we we must obey it”.
According to Ejah, “if the women are strong enough to take care of our homes and care for us as mothers, why don’t we recognize the potential they have to bring them on board to help us in governmental issues?”
Also stressing the need for the Special Seats Bill, the programme manager of GADA, Nnenna Ugbor said there is more serious needs for women to get themselves involved in governance, law and decision making.
“So one of the ways and strategies is the introduction of the Special Seats Bill, which is to encourage women to actually get to the helm of affairs when it comes to governance.
“We recognize that women’s voices are not high or heard enough. We are supposed to ensure that people know about this from different sectors.
“This is why we’ve brought people from different sectors to talk about its importance in partnership to ensure that we push forward the bill.”
Ugboro disclosed that the special seats bill shall also take care of even the marginalized women, people who live with disability, and even young women too, who are sidelined.
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