USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Gender Equality Bill must resurrect!

Why Gender Equality Bill must resurrect!

KAYODE KETEFE

On March 15, 2016, Nigeria missed another opportunity to lay the foundations for social justice cum sustainable growth and development with the rejection of the Gender Equality Bill by the National Assembly. The bill, formally entitled "Gender Parity and Prohibition of Violence against Women", had been sponsored by Senator Abiodun Olujimi, representing Ekiti south.
Olujimi had, during the plenary session of the Senate shed light on the bill, stressing among other things, that it would procure equal rights for women in marriage, education and job.
The rationale for this kind of bill is easily grasped considering the deeply-entrenched practices in our society that are decidedly discriminatory, repressive and exploitative of women.
Unfortunately, the bill was defeated during the first reading in the Senate with stern opposition coming from the controversial Senator Sani Yarima from Zamfara State and a handful of supporters. Mind you, the present Nigerian Senate has only seven female members out of a total of 109 senators!
The most "potent" argument the opposition to the bill craved in aid of their inexorable stance is that the 1999 Constitution has already guaranteed freedom from discrimination to women and other citizens and that the constitutional provisions should suffice without the need for any other special legislation.
This argument is utterly fallacious in that the 1999 constitution itself is decidedly anti-women and stands in need of urgent amendment!
To buttress my point, I will raise here a number of discriminatory provisions inherent in our hallowed constitution.
There are basically two kinds of discrimination against women in the constitution which are the explicit and implicit discrimination.
Examples of implicit discrimination include the gender-biased language of the constitution and fundamental omissions of some innovations in modern constitutions of the world which have been employed to eliminate discrimination against women.
One may say the discrimination against women under the present constitution began from the process of making the constitution itself. An ideal constitution should have inputs of every shade of public opinion, every segment of the society and every sphere of distinct natural or convectional divides that constitute the eclectic mix of the country. But the 1999 constitution was made without the inputs of women who constitute about half the population of Nigeria.
Now regarding the constitution itself, Section 26 of the 1999 constitution explicitly introduces what may be called dichotomy of a citizen's spouse right to Nigerian citizenship. Under that section, a foreign woman married to a Nigerian man is eligible to Nigerian citizenship by registration but the section fails to make the same right available to a foreign man who married a Nigerian woman.
This is classical case of discrimination that is palpably at variance with section 42 of the constitution which provides right to freedom from discrimination on the bases of SEX, religion, ethnicity, political affiliation etc.
Another instance of discrimination is section 29 of the constitution. That section provides that for the purpose of renunciation of citizenship of Nigeria, a married woman irrespective of her biological age shall be deemed to be of full age i.e. an adult. The implication of this will be realized when it is borne in mind that attainment of maturity of the mind is the legislative intention for making 18 years the minimum for eligibility to renounce citizenship. Now the provision that any woman that is married shall be deemed to be of full age for the purpose of the section is strange, especially in a country like Nigeria where girls as young as ten years are given away in marriages.
One may further cite the language of the constitution which obviously is gender biased. There is inordinate use of male pronouns like " He" " His" and "Him" to the total exclusion of female pronouns. The male pronouns appear about 253 times in the 1999 constitution. While this may appear innocuous especially in the light of the Interpretation Act which makes all male pronouns used in statutes applicable to women as well, yet the fact still remains that most modern constitutions have moved away from the patriarchal mentality of using exclusive male pronouns in the constitution to the gender neutral of using " a person" instead of "he" or to the gender sensitive of using "He or She" instead of exclusive use of "he".
Furthermore, the 1999 constitution, apart from making a general provision forbidding discrimination against any person on the bases of sex and other factors, completely shies away from making gender-specific provisions to protect women from discrimination. Given the nature and scope of abuse of women right in the country, this almost amounts to a criminal omission.
The conclusion here is that the extant Nigerian Constitution is grossly inadequate to grant protection for the interests of women and therefore it itself stands in need of urgent amendment to make it gender-compliant.
Furthermore there is a need for a gender-specific legislation for the purpose of eliminating entrenched practices of discrimination against women which is inimical to national developmental goals. Therefore the recently-defeated Gender Equality Bill should be reintroduced to the National Assembly and passed into law.

Ketefe may be followed on twitter @Ketesco




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