As the build up to the 2023 General Election intensifies, Abia women have been tasked to make themselves available for elective positions to ensure equal representation at all levels of decision making.
A Journalist and Gender Rights Advocate, Norah Okafor, who gave the advice while speaking with newsmen in Umuahia, noted that women’s equal participation and leadership in political and public life are essential to achieving the sustainable development goals.
According to Okafor, the under representation of women constitutes a serious democratic deficit which undermines the legitimacy of contemporary democratic ideals.
She regretted that women have not been adequately represented in the legislative house especially in Abia State where she observed that no single woman member was in the State House of Assembly, describing it as an anathema for a man to chair the house Committee on Women Affairs which she said “the Committee has not been functional because they are not conversant with happenings around the female folk”.
The Gender Rights Advocate stressed the need for women to support their own in order to win the hearts of their male counterparts adding that the reason why women have not been able to break even was because they work against themselves.
“With more women in the politics, the voice of women would be heard and their rights and that of the girl child would receive overwhelming support”, she said.
The front-line Journalist noted that more than 51 percent of women are involved in voting during elections adding that despite these, women are still under represented in both elective and appointive positions.
She therefore urged interested women to be economically empowered so as not to be a liability to both themselves, husbands and society, adding that they should first conquer their fear in order to take the bull by the horns in the pursuit of their respective ambitious.
Okafor, who is an aspirant to the Arochukwu State Constituency in the Abia State House of Assembly, decried the level of under representation of her people, Ututu in Arochukwu LGA of the State over the years and called on people of the area to rise up to the challenge of getting it right in the 2023 general elections by obtaining their Permanent Voter’s Card.
She informed that she was in the race to add to the voice of women, children and the girl child who are often neglected in the scheme of things in Africa and Nigeria and called for total support for the political ambition of women in the forthcoming election.
Okafor further revealed that the Nigerian constitution allows a woman to contest an election where she is born and her place of marriage and as such can never be a barrier.
