By G9ija
The Executive Director of Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), Clement Nwankwo, says women are poorly represented in Nigeria’s political space and wants the incoming National Assembly to address that.
“Beyond the fact that we have a 70 percent alteration rate, you also have the fact that in the House of Representatives in the Senate, the number of women who are in the National Assembly are being designated on a regular basis,” Nwankwo said on Thursday.
The PLAC director said that “I think for a country with such large representation in the legislature, it is deeply worrying that we do have only a few women being elected, in fact, an embarrassingly low number of women being elected into the legislature.
“These are concerns that political party needs to take into account deciding that you must have the quality of representation that is needed such that the best comes out as candidates from your party, but also that you give a space for women to participate in decision making.
Nwankwo lamented that the representation of women in our political space is mortifying.
“For me, I think it is sad where we are with the level and extent of women’s representation, it is embarrassing,” he said.
“It is important that we do have a plain field that allows the emergence of more women. We must by the constitution, create additional seats for women.”
According to him, the approval of gender bills that support women in public office should be embraced.
“There is only really one major bill affecting the female gender in the National Assembly and that is the bill to increase by constitutional alteration, the nature and level of representation of women by creating additional seats,” Nwankwo said.
“Once we can do this, we will find out that there will be a much more increased representation of women because the women would be encouraged to vie for the seats they are contesting with men for.”