Leadership (Abuja)
Kunle Somorin
27 August 2008
The Nigeria's first Lady, Hajiya Turai Yar'Adua has, while acknowledging the President's resolve at ensuring gender mainstreaming as a major policy focus of this administration, bemoaned the discrimination being perpetuated against women in the country.
Speaking at a two-day national workshop on the implementation of the United Nation's Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in Abuja, the First Lady, while disclosing the non-adoption of the previous bill for the domestication of the convention by the National Assembly owing to lack of effective advocacy, urged all concerned to correct the lapse and pledged her support and commitment to facilitating the early passage of the bill.
At the workshop were Hajia Kolo Babagana Kingibe (who stood in for the First Lady), Commissioners of Women and Social Development from 17 states, Mission Director of USAID, Ms Sharon Cromer, Senator Dahiru Umaru, Chairman, Senate Committee on Human Rights, judiciary and Legal Matters, members of civil society advocacy group, academics and international development partners.
She also emphasized the inclusion of women into the economic and political space and the need to deepen women's involvement in decision-making, moreso at the grassroots level.
"Regrettably, almost thirty years after the ratification of the Convention, we still have a lot to do with in order to ensure its solid domestication."
The First Lady lamented the inability of the previous National Assembly to pass into law the CEDAW Domestication Bill because the advocacy level was low.
In the pervading milieu of patriarchal culture, HIV/AIDS pandemic, poverty, maternal and infant mortality, she urged all stakeholders to ensure the passage of the bill that the current National Assembly has accepted to work on.
Nigeria acceded to CEDAW in 1984 and signed the ratification document in 1985 under the Babangida Administration. Of the 192-member-United Nations Organisation, 185 had endorsed CEDAW, leaving only seven countries to endorse the universal instrument. The non-signatories include the United States.
However, Country Director of the International Republican Institute, a United States Agency for International Development-funded organisation, Dr Mourtada Deme, underscored the need for developing nations to domesticate CEDAW and ensure its prompt implementation.
According to him, that would secure "quality input" from the underrepresented groups, including women, youths and the disabled.
IRI, he said, believes in "open, inclusive and participatory processes" necessary for a central, vibrant and healthy democratic development.
He added that in order "to remove the barriers and set standards for participation" for women's participation, he reiterates is "a strong indicator of a country's development."
He reminded the workshop of the success of countries like Rwanda, with 49 percent representation as a model for Africa. The overall global average for women's representation, in the Parliament is 15.1 percent.
He therefore enjoined the womenfolk to ensure that they are properly mainstreamed with constitutional backing during the Constitution Review exercise.
Hajiya Saudatu Bungudu recalled the sixth country report she recently delivered in New York, where she stated that the nation is making some progress on the CEDAW bill.
She however decried the growing rate of maternal mortality, poverty among the womenfolk and their low integration in governance and policy-making positions.
She blamed these on religion and harmful cultural practices that encourage women relegation.
Senator Umaru assured the conferees that the National Assembly is doing everything possible to domesticate the CEDAW Bill at the earliest possible time.
The keynote speaker, Hajiya Fatima Kwanku, suggested that where religion and culture do not permit, it could be expedient to extract the practicable part of CEDAW and ensure its domestication while advocacy groups continue to pursue the agenda for a wholesale adoption with time, a stand that many flayed, saying Nigeria entered the convention without reservations and thus must not renege on the stand for a holistic domestication.
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