WOMEN AND THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION

From the 60s when the gale of independence swept through the continent, the issue of women in politics has been advocated by many who hold the view that the women of Africa have certain essential contributions to make to the development of the continent. This proposition has been hinged on certain grounds. These have included the example of the West and Asia where women like Britain's Margaret Thatcher, Israel's Golda Meir, India's Indira Ghandi, Philippines' Benazir Bhutto, and lately Germany's Angela Merkel have showed up and have done or are doing well.
They have also pointed to the recent example of women in Nigeria under the Obasanjo administration such as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dora Akunyili, Obiageli Ezekwesili, Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, and Nenadi Usman who are examples of excellence in their chosen fields. Then there is the case of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, president of Liberia. We also have Zimbabwe's Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Prize winner and a host of others. All these have been referred to in the case for the involvement of women in the leadership of states.
But we need to consider the issue of whether our men have satisfied our fundamental expectations of leadership. We have seen almost a jubilee of leadership that cannot be said to be satisfactory save one or two pop-ups of good ones like Nelson Mandela of South Africa. Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Togo's Gnasingbe Eyadema, Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, Ethiopia's Haile Mariam, Nigeria's Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, Liberia's Charles Taylor and others are men who have highlighted defects of leadership that are unprecedented. Political perennialism (sit-tightism), abuse of power, violations of human rights, mismanagement of the economy, regional conflicts, unholy alliances, neo-colonialism, underdevelopment have been sordid realities of the past four decades when we have had men on the saddle of political power.
The fact of an emerging spectrum of feminine leadership resources across the continent is no longer controvertible. Each country in Africa is producing women professionals that possess requisite leadership potentials that can catapult the continent to new heights were they given a chance. The idea of excluding women from elective positions has never and can seldom be to the advantage of the continent. In recent hugely controversial elections in Nigeria, women aspirants were "technically" excluded from the primaries of each of the political parties, hounded by thugs, intimidated one way or another, and in the end the ratio of women to men that clinched elective positions remains sadly disproportionate. The object of these machinations may be focused on the individual women but where the interest of the continent is in focus such unwholesome tactics as are used against these women would be discarded.
Nigeria's fight against corruption is still on course courtesy of that virile young crusader. Nuhu Ribadu, but can we compare the achievements of Professor Dora Akunyili in NAFDAC, Dr. Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke in the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE), Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in Nigeria's Ministry of Finance, and Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili in the Education Ministry with that of the EFCC? The disparity is far apart.
The problem of corruption and abuse of power, the issues of human rights violations, unconstitutional conduct, mismanagement of state economies, etc may not be strange to leadership when it is in the hands of women but their prominence or perpetuation can be guaranteed to be alien to the corridors of power. Gender equality presupposes giving a chance to a marginalised gender (in this case women) to perform and then be asked questions later on their performance.
The saddle of leadership is long overdue to be ceded to the feminine gender at least for a while. Were we to eschew prejudice, bias, chauvinism, subjectivism and all other less than wholesome oddities of the human nature it would be obvious in no time how much progress would be made by this great continent in the areas of good governance, infrastructural development, rule of law, economic stability and progress, health, education, etc.
Making concessions for the feminine gender to have a shot at leadership does not erode the headship or leadership of men over them nor does it make a woman not to be a woman. The husbands of such women as I have enumerated here are still the heads of their families and have not lost in any way their authority over their wives. That emotional insecurity that is transferred to the political turf as regards women is unnecessary and should be dumped in the trash-can of history and let the continent move forward. Let the women of Africa have a chance at leadership.