Why WPO Are Supporting OBI – DATTI
A number of factors have led to women rising up to participate in the forthcoming election process of 2023. Women are grossly inadequately included in the political leadership of Nigeria. They are also the less economically empowered, often and easily emotionally abused as well as sexually violated, particularly due to rampant kidnapping and terrorism. They have continued to suffer from the loss of children through infant mortality including the loss of their own lives during pregnancy as a result of lack of affordable and adequate healthcare while the men don’t have these issues to contend.
Various affirmative actions to ensure greater participation and inclusion of women in political and government leadership have proven futile. Women in Nigeria are also not allowed to become indigenes of the state where they are married till after five years, women have been fighting to change this unconventional rule but have been unsuccessful so far. What this means in reality is that any woman married outside her state of origin will not be eligible to contest political positions in the state where she is married till after five years.
Women in Nigeria have been rated the poorest in the country according to IMF report as cited in a study carried out by Onwuka, Nwadiubu and Isiwu and published in the International Journal of Business and Management Vol.14, No.11, 2019 titled ‘Poverty among Women in Nigeria – Psychological and Economic Perspective: A study based on South West Nigeria’. According to the study, ‘women constitute over 60% of the poorest people in Nigeria’. Three years later, nothing has changed, instead, the situation has gone from bad to worse. It is public knowledge that when a woman is empowered, the family is equally empowered as women in most recent times, have continued to cater for the livelihood and general well being of the family. The lack of financial capacity plays a major part in why women cannot compete with their male counterparts, though we know that Nigeria is largely a patriarchal society.
Other factors that have now necessitated the greater participation of women in the electoral process in Nigeria would include the high rate of inflation which is currently at 18.6% in June 2022 according to the National Bureau of Statistics. There is also widespread hunger, illiteracy and ignorance. According to the report given by Premium Times Nigeria on 3 Dec 2020, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa found that Nigeria has the highest maternal deaths in Africa with more than 50,000 women dying every year.
The most worrisome presently, is the high rate of insecurity which has seen a lot of women kidnapped, raped and killed by bandits and terrorists currently ravaging Nigeria.
A careful assessment of the Nigerian situation by women revealed that leadership failure is the primary reason for all the socio-economic problems Nigeria is facing; hence their keenness in the electoral process and deciding who leads them going forward especially in the 2023 election
Mr Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party of Nigeria and his Vice Presidential candidate, Prof. Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed has proven verifiable track records of transformational leadership.
The two are technocrats who have continued to campaign with their achievements from their previous and existing offices. They have clearly declared there readiness to move Nigeria from a ‘consumption to production’ economy when elected into office in 2023. There is widespread national acceptance of the Obi-Datti Presidency – a movement that has become the frenzy which has also culminated into what is now called the ‘Obidient and Yusful Nigerian movement’. Nigerians believe that Mr. Peter Obi has the dexterity to pull Nigeria back from the brinks when given the opportunity.
With women, and youths constituting over 75% of registered voters in Nigeria according to the Independent National Electoral Commission as reported by Vanguard newspaper on 15 June 2022, history is indeed in the making and Women For Peter Obi (WPO) will be part of that history by making sure that the Nigerian woman is fully and fairly standing up to be recognized.
