By Ebimoboere Alaibe Elezieanya
The Reserved Seats Bill remains before the National Assembly of Nigeria- debated, deferred, and still awaiting the decisive vote that will determine whether Nigeria formally enshrines a commitment to women’s political inclusion. That process matters. It is necessary, even overdue. But its pendency has also created something less defensible: a convenient alibi for political parties content to stand still while the legislature makes up its mind.
This inertia is neither required nor justified.
There is nothing in law, or in logic, that prevents political parties from acting now. They do not need constitutional amendments to begin correcting the imbalance they routinely acknowledge in speeches but perpetuate in practice. Parties can, today, nominate women as consensus candidates in winnable constituencies. They can reform opaque selection processes that systematically exclude female aspirants. They can deploy resources, structure, and institutional backing toward women candidates with the same seriousness afforded to their male counterparts. None of this requires legislation. It requires political will.
The data from Nigeria’s most recent elections makes this point unmistakably clear. In the 2023 general elections, only about 10 percent of all candidates were women, a figure that underscores how early exclusion begins, long before ballots are cast. Out of more than 15,000 candidates who contested across presidential, national, and state-level elections, just over 1,500 were women. Even more telling, 96 percent of those women candidates were unsuccessful, pointing not only to underrepresentation at entry, but systemic disadvantage throughout the electoral process.
At the highest level, the imbalance was stark: among 18 presidential candidates, only one was a woman. At the legislative level, the pattern repeated itself. Women remained a small minority among candidates for both the Senate and the House of Representatives, continuing a downward trend from previous election cycles. These are not marginal gaps. They are structural failures.
The continued delay of the Reserved Seats Bill has, in effect, become a comfortable excuse. It has become an argument for postponement, for deferral, for insisting that structural reform must precede cultural change. But this is a false choice. Structural and cultural shifts are not sequential; they are mutually reinforcing. One does not need to wait for the other. Indeed, the refusal to act in the absence of compulsion reveals a deeper problem: not incapacity, but reluctance.
Women are not a constituency to be courted episodically during election cycles. They constitute approximately 49.3 percent of Nigeria’s population, according to the World Bank. Yet their presence in governance remains strikingly limited. Following the 2023 elections, women occupy fewer than 4 percent of seats in the National Assembly, placing Nigeria among the lowest-ranked countries globally, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. This disparity is not merely symbolic; it has measurable consequences for governance, policy priorities, and national stability.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the context of insecurity. For women, insecurity is not an abstract policy challenge. It is lived reality. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, women and children constitute the majority of internally displaced persons in Nigeria’s conflict-affected regions.
Gender-based violence rises sharply in such contexts, as documented by UN Women, while access to healthcare becomes more precarious. Nigeria’s maternal mortality rate, estimated at over 500 deaths per 100,000 live births by the World Health Organization, remains one of the highest globally, and worsens where state capacity is weakest. Education follows the same pattern.
UNICEF reports that Nigeria has one of the largest populations of out-of-school children worldwide, with girls disproportionately affected in insecure regions.
To speak of national security without accounting for these realities is to engage in a form of political fiction, a performance of governance that reflects the concerns of the already secure while marginalising those most affected.
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The case for women’s inclusion in governance, therefore, is not sentimental. It is strategic. Evidence continues to affirm this. Studies linked to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 framework show that peace agreements are significantly more likely to endure when women are meaningfully involved. Cross-country analyses further demonstrate that increased female political participation correlates with stronger investments in healthcare, education, and social protection- pillars of long-term national stability.
Excluding women is, therefore, not just unjust; it is inefficient and self-defeating. The Reserved Seats Bill, when passed, will represent an important corrective and deliberate intervention to level a field that has long been structurally uneven. But it was never intended to be the sole solution. Its architects understood that legislation sets a minimum threshold, not the full extent of responsibility.
What happens in the interim matters just as much. At present, that interim is defined by hesitation. Party hierarchies remain closed. Candidate selection processes, opaque at the best of times, continue to operate as exclusive systems resistant to disruption. Women who seek entry are told, sometimes politely and sometimes bluntly, that the timing is wrong, that the electorate is not ready, or that they should wait for legislative guarantees. But no law can substitute for political courage. No statute can compel sincerity.
The gap between legislative intent and political practice is where women’s ambitions are most often stalled. While the state signals recognition of a problem, party structures signal indifference to solving it unless compelled. This dissonance raises a more fundamental question, not of legality, but of conscience.
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The passage of the Reserved Seats Bill will be welcome. But good faith cannot be legislated. It must be chosen. And it must be chosen now. Political parties must act, not to pre-empt the bill, but to demonstrate alignment with its spirit. If their support for women’s inclusion is genuine, it should be evident in their decisions before it becomes mandatory as commitment should not begin at compliance.
This is a call to party leaders across the political spectrum: nominate women as consensus candidates in viable races. Do not relegate them to symbolic contests or unwinnable constituencies. Provide real backing- financial, structural, and strategic. Build systems that reward merit rather than gatekeeping, and that do not penalise women for the simple act of aspiring to lead. The National Assembly will eventually cast its vote. But history will also record what political parties chose to do in the meantime, whether they treated this moment as an opportunity to lead, or as an excuse to delay.
The difference between those choices will define not just the future of women in Nigerian politics, but the credibility and effectiveness of our political system itself.
Mrs Elezieanya, DG, ITeach Africa Initiative and South-South Coordinator, RSWB Campaign Coalition, writes from Abuja.
