Yes She Can!

The head of gender unit, voter education department INEC, Lagos, Fortune Azuka Mbamalu, has advised women in politics, particularly those aspiring and contesting for positions in the near 2019 polls to gun for elective positions rather than appointive ones.

She also hinted on what women can do to ensure their success at the polls next year.

She said this while speaking to women from various political parties of various constituencies at the Women Election Campaign Training, facilitated by Emerge Women.

According to Mbamalu, elective positions is where you campaign for your votes by yourself, talk to the people, network with the people, have a relationship with the grass-root where you come from. “They know you and you know them, and they voted for you to get to the top. They know that, this is our person. She knows our problems, she feels our pain and she’ll be able to attend to our needs when she gets there.

“But in appointive positions, you don’t contest for anything, you don’t vie for anything thing, they just handpick you because they think that you can fit into an area. Your loyalty lies with the person that appointed you, but if it’s the people that elected you, your loyalty lies with them. Your heart will go out to the people and you’ll want to do something for them,” she said.

She further told journalists that, for women to succeed in their political aspirations they should continue to network with the grassroots, and “let the people know what we can do as women in politics, that it’s not just a game for men alone. Women have a lot to give in politics and the nation at large”.

“If you look at women that have done so well in government like the Margaret Ekpo and Funmilayo Ransom Kuti of those days, they impacted the lives of the people. So I don’t think that there’s nothing women cannot contribute, or something that is beyond women when it comes to decision making” she adds.

The training was designed in response to the huge under representation of women in leadership, especially in elective leadership, and to equip women with the right skill to increase their chances of winning.

“The women election campaign training is one of the resources we have developed at Emerge Women to help women running for, or, women who are aspiring to run for office, and those who are campaign managers, with the skills they need to contest and win their elections and that’s the focus for us because we know you ought to have a strategic campaign plan. You need to have a plan on how to do your fundraising. You need to understand what data can do for you as someone who’s running for office. You need to understand how to mobilise the grassroots,” Mary Ikoku, founder and CEO, Emerge Women.

“We need to have more women in elective leadership. We need to have more women in our parliament, both the National and State Assemblies, we need to have more women running with men to get this country developed. Because one of the key development indices is that you need to have a full representation of all the groups of people that make up your population, and women make up more than 50% of Nigeria’s population. These are a special group of people and it becomes worrisome why they would be excluded from the decision making table,” she said.

Desmond Okon