Jumoke Olasunkanmi
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Tajudeen Abbas, has vowed to bring back gender bills that failed to scaled through in the last assembly in order to ensure that women are represented in politics and governance.
He made this statement on Wednesday at the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS)’s conference on ‘Women in Governance’ in Abuja, where he assured the participants that the 10th House will continue to ensure that women are properly represented by reviewing the constitution to make it easier for them to participate in governance.
The Lawmaker stated: “I understand the frustration of women following the rejection of the Gender Bill in the 9th House of Representatives. That bill failed to pass because of the challenges of finding modalities for its success.
“But the 10th House will be revisiting the Bill as part of our Legislative Agenda, and we believe that working together with the women and stakeholders, we should be able to have a law that will benefit the women and all Nigerians and improve governance in Nigeria.”
He added that the slow pace of “gender mainstreaming in politics and government needs to be addressed urgently if Nigeria is to catch up with the rest of the world, with just 6 years to 2030,” even as he expressed fears that Nigeria may not meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of Gender equality which includes ‘ensuring full participation of women in leadership and decision making.’
“While we have made commitments towards achieving the SDGs through various national policies and programmes, women and girls in Nigeria continue to face significant barriers to participating in decision-making processes across various sectors, including politics and the economy. This is in spite of their substantial numerical strength in the general population and as voters,” he said.
Hon. Abass therefore called for support you promote women’s participation in politics and governance, while commending the current and past administrations for laying a policy foundation for a new gender policy that will set the minimum standard to be attained by the Nigerian government to meet President Bola Tinubu’s mandate for gender equality.
