Spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Hakeem Baba-Ahmed has criticised the national assembly for voting against gender bills in the constitutional amendment process.<\/p>\n
The national assembly on Tuesday voted against bills\u00a0seeking to give women more opportunities in leadership and governance.<\/p>\n
WITHIN NIGERIA gathered that some\u00a0women staged a protest at the national assembly over the rejection of the bills, and accused the lawmakers of bias.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the development, Pauline Tallen, minister of women affairs,\u00a0said\u00a0the male lawmakers who voted against the gender bills have no respect for women.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Wednesday in an interview on Channels Television, Baba-Ahmed said the quality of leadership in the country will not change if the scope of selection is not widened to accommodate youths and women.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were some key clauses that would have added substantially in terms of improving the quality of the constitution and the leadership selection,\u201d Baba-Ahmed said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them, tragically, was the rejection of setting aside 35 percent of the elective positions for women. This is not for a country like Nigeria. The level of underrepresentation of women in key positions and decision making is tragic.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is really tragic. We have reduced women only to the role of the voters, basically. The political system has reduced everybody else, except the people that we elect, as spectators who are only relevant for the purposes of election. After that, the people we elect run away with power and do what they want with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was particularly saddened by the rejection. Every gender-based amendment was rejected. It was as if we had a legislature that was waging war against women.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have an extremely self-centered set of legislators. There are people who think any concession made to a critical group like women is power they lose. They read themselves into all these amendments rather than the interest of the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you don\u2019t widen the scope for leadership selection, if you don\u2019t allow a greater number of young people and women to emerge through the process, how else do you change the quality of leadership that we have?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Hakeem Baba-Ahmed has criticised the national assembly for voting against gender bills in the constitutional amendment process. The national assembly on Tuesday voted against bills\u00a0seeking to give women more opportunities in leadership and governance. WITHIN NIGERIA gathered that some\u00a0women staged a protest at the national assembly over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":84324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_bookmark_settings":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[31420,16681,16,18247],"class_list":["post-156384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-gender-bills","tag-hakeem-baba-ahmed","tag-national-assembly","tag-northern-elders-forum-nef"],"yoast_head":"\n