Pick Women As Running Mates, CSOs Tell APC, PDP, LP, Others

The Conference of Civil Society of Nigeria (CCSN) has called on candidates and political parties to pick women as their running mates for the 2023 presidential election.

The CSOs stated this yesterday during a press conference in Abuja, added that of all the political parties, none has a woman as presidential standard bearer for the 2023 General Elections.

The CCSN chairperson, Comrade Adams Otakwu, lamented that less than five percent of gubernatorial candidates are women, while over 95 percent are men.

He further added that less than 10 percent of candidates for the federal parliament are women while over 90 percent are men, adding that less than 20 percent of candidates for state parliaments are women, while over 80 percent are men.

“To continue to exclude women from our political governance system because they belong to the sex that wears skirts, is simply and squarely a voluntary suicide mission on our part.

It is against this background that we strongly advocate and call on all political parties participating in the 2023 General elections in Nigeria to adopt and field women and youths as running mates (at state and national levels) in order to gain massive support of women, youths, and the general public, as we continue our unprecedented nation-wide mobilisation of civil societies and Thirty Million Nigerians for the 2023 polls.”

Reacting to the poor representation of women in the electoral system so far, he said “These figures fall far below the global average, where women hold about 23% of the seats in Parliaments according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union data, on global average.

“Regrettably, these appalling statistics and extremely imbalanced ratio are unassertive of our commitment as a country to affirmative action and gender parity, especially when compared with countries like Rwanda, South-Africa, Ethiopia, New Zealand, India, the Philippines with women figures playing prominent roles in their governments.

“In the United States of America, a record number of women are serving in the 117th U.S. Congress, with a woman as speaker, symbolizing a jump towards gender equality in U.S. politics. Despite constituting a vast majority of our population sector, the current level of women inclusion implies that their political status will not be positively aligned with their numerical status in 2023 and they may generally be discouraged from participating in public life, as well as access to rights and empowerment. Such gender paradox is indeed non-explanatory and must not be allowed to continue.

“Nigerian Women, Youths and People With Disabilities (PWD) deserve to be at the epicenter of political governance in 2023.

We believe strongly that the presence of women in the next political dispensation of Nigeria, will greatly shape the country’s destiny, make symbolic impact and deliver substantive reforms in our social, political and economic destiny, as demonstrated by some of our outstanding women like Hajya Amina Mohammed of the United Nations, and Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of the World Trade Organisation amongst others.

“In fact, we have no doubt that Nigerian women have the capacity to proffer a permanent solution to the perennial challenges of terrorism, banditry, insurgency and other patterns of insecurity and criminalities ravaging Nigeria,” he said.