Group Decries Exclusion Of Women From Parties’ Primaries

The executive director of Gender Strategy Advancement International (GSAI), Adaora Onyechere Sydney-Jack, has decried what she described as the structural and deliberate exclusion of women from the ongoing primary elections of political parties across Nigeria ahead of the 2027 general elections.

Sydney-Jack, who spoke to journalists in Abuja, called for sanctions against political parties which fail to meet affirmative action targets for women.

She insisted that Nigeria’s democracy cannot thrive while women remain systematically sidelined from candidate emergence and party decision-making processes.

“There should be enforceable accountability mechanisms. Democracy cannot rely solely on moral persuasion. Possible sanctions or incentives could include reduced public funding access, mandatory quota compliance, incentives for gender-balanced tickets, or electoral penalties for persistent exclusion.Several democracies already implement such measures,” she said.

The GSAI executive director said despite women constituting nearly half of Nigeria’s population and electoral strength, they continue to face significant barriers during party primaries, including exorbitant nomination fees, political intimidation, monetised delegate systems, and exclusion from critical negotiations where candidacies are determined.

She said, “The troubling reality is that the recent primaries currently ongoing across parts of Nigeria have shown little or no meaningful shift from the entrenched norm. Across multiple political spaces, women continue to report being sidelined, pressured to step down for male aspirants, excluded from strategic negotiations, or subtly threatened with political ostracization should they insist on contesting.”

According to her, political parties have continued to treat inclusion as campaign rhetoric while resisting genuine reforms capable of guaranteeing women equitable access to political leadership.

“In Nigeria, women participate massively as mobilizers, campaigners, financiers at grassroots levels, and voting blocs. Yet, when candidacy and power-sharing emerge, women are relegated to ceremonial positions often reduced to ‘Women Leader’ structures without consequential influence over delegate selection, zoning, financing, or ticket allocation,” she stated.

The GSAI executive director argued that the exclusion of women from party primaries was not accidental but deeply institutional, sustained through opaque consensus arrangements, elite patronage networks and patriarchal power structures within party systems.

“These realities create a democratic bottleneck that excludes women before the general election even begins,” she said.

She explained that despite years of advocacy, women continue to struggle because advocacy has not yet sufficiently disrupted entrenched political power economics.

She said, “Primaries in Nigeria are not merely democratic exercises; they are often transactional arenas shaped by financial leverage, elite patronage, and deeply gendered power relations. Women frequently encounter – exorbitant nomination fees, political violence and intimidation, cultural stereotypes questioning female leadership, limited access to campaign financing, exclusion from informal negotiation spaces where candidacies are brokered.”

She noted that countries such as Rwanda, Senegal, Namibia and South Africa had significantly improved women’s political representation through intentional reforms, including constitutional quotas, parity laws and gender-balanced candidate systems.