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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
The apex body of northern women, Jam’iyyar Matan Arewa (JMA), has called on women in the region to come out and save the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Adamawa State, Senator Aisha Ahmed Dahiru Binani, from alleged gang up by men who do not want women to succeed in politics.
Addressing a press conference in Kaduna on Wednesday, the President of JMA, Hajiya Rabi Saulawa, said men had been consistent in ganging up against women in politics, especially in northern Nigeria, citing the case of late Sen Aisha Alhassan of Taraba State and now Binani in Adamawa.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared the March 18 governorship election in Adamawa State inconclusive and rescheduled it for April 15.
Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and incumbent governor of the state, Ahmadu Fintiri, had 421,524 votes, while Binani polled 390,275 votes before the election was declared inconclusive.
Speaking, Saulawa said: “In the National Assembly elections, only three female senators were elected out of a total of 109; 15 female members of the House of Representatives were elected out of 360 members.
“To compound our myriad of gender-related problems in the North, we have only one Northern female senator and five honourables in the Houses of Assembly. Being born female in the North automatically makes you a third class citizen that should not be seen or heard, and this has more to do with culture than religion.
“A nation that refuses to allow half of its population, which happens to be us women, to give its quota in its development cannot prosper. The irony of elections is that the majority of the voters that actually come out to vote are women, and we go there to vote in men that continue to make our lives more difficult.”
