PDP, APC Shun Women Aspirants

As the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria draw closer, it seems Nigerian women are lagging behind. The two major parties-the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the leading opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)- do not have any woman presidential aspirants.

In the 19 years of Nigeria’s return to democracy, no woman has emerged president, vice president or even an elected governor, although they have run and won other elective positions in the federal and state legislatures.

A woman, Patricia Ette, even became Speaker of the House of Representatives. Women have also elected speaker in some state assemblies while a woman, Aisha Alhassan, ran for governorship of Taraba State in 2015 and finished second, losing to the PDP candidate.

In the current dispensation, there are only six female deputy governors and seven senators (the highest height women have attained in politics).

On the part of the APC since its creation in 2014, they have not had any women president aspirant, the highest women have aspired, is the governorship seat, when the current Minister of Women Affairs, Alhassan, popularly known as Mama Taraba ran in the 2015 Taraba Guber elections.

Also, the party had last week adopted President Buhari as its consensus candidate ahead of the presidential election scheduled for February 16th 2019.

The National Secretary of the APC, Maimala Buni, however, had said that party members interested in contesting against Buhari for the party’s presidential ticket, were free to pick the nomination form. However, he said the National Executive Council (NEC) of the party had already endorsed Buhari for the second term.

Buni said: “Once the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party passes a vote of confidence on the President, that President stands accepted because the NEC is the highest organ of the party and it met to take the decision, where every interest was represented, so the National Executive Committee of the APC has passed a vote of confidence on our President and that means every APC member has endorsed him”

“In advanced Democracy, once NEC of a party passes a vote of confidence on the president, no one contest against him,” Buni added.

This statement by the APC National Secretary could be seen as the reason why women in the party have shied away from picking the presidential nomination form.

“There is no need for anyone including the women to pick the APC Presidential nomination form, the party has already decided who they want in 2019,” Mrs Audu an APC member said.

“But this would in no way help our party to grow in the right direction, if President Buhari was a woman, am sure he won’t be given that same support, you know they say it’s a man’s world” she added.

While on the part of the main opposition PDP, there no women among all its 12 presidential aspirants.

The PDP presidential aspirants include: Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President; the Senate President, Bukola Saraki; his predecessor, David Mark; Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal; Governor of Gombe State, Ibrahim Dankwambo; a former governor of Kano State and currently a senator, Rabi’u Kwankwaso; a former governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido; and a former governor of Kaduna State and immediate past Chairman of the PDP, Ahmed Makarfi.

Others are a former governor of Sokoto State, Attahiru Bafarawa; a former governor of Plateau State, David Jang; a former Minister of Special Duties, Tanimu Turaki; and a former Kaduna North senator, Datti Baba-Ahmed.

“There is no woman in PDP that is as popular as Saraki, Atiku, Kwankwaso and the rest of the male aspirants, if PDP must win the 2019 presidential election, it has to present someone who is both popular and has the financial capacity, you cannot get such woman in the PDP for now,” Mr Ndubuisi Akoma, a PDP youth leader in Imo state said.

The known female presidential aspirants can only be found in smaller political parties with little or no capacity to win in the so-called “big political parties”.

The women contesting under other platforms are Dr. Elishama Rosemary Ideh, who is seeking to realise her ambition via the platform of Alliance for a New Nigeria (ANN); Remi Sonaiy, a retired Professor of French and Applied Linguistics, who is running under KOWA party, a party she founded and Eunice Atujide, the presidential flagbearer of the National Interest Party (NIP).

The fact that no woman has indicated interest in running for the presidency on the platform of the two leading political parties in Nigeria is an indication that the role of women in politics may be diminishing in a country whose population figure by the National Population Commission (NPC) in April was pegged at 193 million with 51 per cent males and 49 per cent females.