On April 29, more than a thousand Nigerian womenmarched to the National Assembly demanding the passage of the Special Seats for Women Bill, and no lawmaker came out to address them.
Women make up nearly half of Nigeria’s population, yet hold just four per cent of its political power. This is what it means to live under laws shaped largely without your input, while being told that the system includes you.
Isn’t it concerning that laws concerning Nigerian women, their bodies, safety, and economic lives are made largely by men?
There is a Special Seats for Women Bill aimed at creating reserved legislative seats for women across all 36 states and the FCT, still waiting to be passed. Why is there hesitation to close it?
If the resistance is still rooted in the archaic belief that women are not able to lead, then that argument does not survive even the most basic comparison.
Take Rwanda, where women hold over 60 per cent of parliamentary seats. The country has not collapsed under the weight of female leadership. If anything, it has become a reference point. Senegal also records significantly higher female political participation, so what exactly is Nigeria’s excuse?
See also: The Strong Woman Myth Needs to Retire This Workers’ Day 2026
Why the Special Seats Bill?
Nigeria continues to position itself as supportive of women in leadership, but the four per cent representation of women in Nigerian politics tells a different story.
The Special Seats Bill is an attempt to correct a system that has consistently excluded women from the spaces where decisions are made. It proposes guaranteed legislative presence for women across every state.
This is about moving women from the margins of decision-making to the centre of it. It is about ensuring that laws are not only made about women, but also by them. Because as it stands, Nigerian women live under laws they had almost no hand in shaping.
A recent report by the United Nations projects that at the current pace, closing the global gender equality gap could take up to a century. Nigeria, however, is lagging in a way that is beginning to feel deliberate.
In the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index, Nigeria ranked 124 out of 148 countries. Despite decades of policy conversations, advocacy, and public commitment to women’s inclusion, the numbers have barely shifted.
In the Nigerian National Assembly, women occupy only 64 out of 1,460 seats (not 64 per cent, but 64 seats). In a country where women make up nearly half of the population, their presence in the highest lawmaking body is barely visible, and at this point, it is starting to look more like a design.
So How Has This Four Per Cent Sustained Itself for So Long?
Even before elections happen, political parties have already decided who their candidates will be and in many cases, that process is far from transparent.
The tickets are expensive, alliances strategic, and most of the time loyalty is rewarded over competence. Women are not just losing elections but are being filtered out long before voters get a say.
The cost of politics is another major problem, as running for office in Nigeria requires money, alongside networks and visibility, and these resources are already unevenly distributed.
Men, who have in the past dominated both political and economic spaces, vie for position with an advantage that women are somehow expected to overcome. And even when women push through those barriers and the uneven playing field, there is the question of survival within the system.
Politics in Nigeria can be aggressive, hostile, and often unsafe. For many women, participating comes with risks that go beyond losing an election, ranging from intimidation to reputational attacks that are rarely directed at their male counterparts in the same way.
This is coupled with the fact that leadership in Nigeria is still largely coded as male, and women who step into political spaces are often scrutinised more harshly, questioned more aggressively, and expected to prove legitimacy in ways men are not.
These grievances show up in voter perception, media framing, and even within institutions that claim to be neutral, and when all is put together, the outcome starts to make sense.
This is why conversations pertaining to this issue cannot stop at encouraging women to “participate more” when the problem is access and the design.
When a system produces the same outcome consistently, election after election, it is a pattern, and patterns in this context are sustained by people.
During the April 29 rally, the demands were clear, direct, and impossible to misinterpret. Irene Awunah, president of the Nigeria League of Women Voters (NILOWV), urged lawmakers to move beyond acknowledgement and into action:
“We are asking members of the National Assembly to use their good offices to influence the passage of this bill, vote in its favour, and reject any opposition when it comes to the floor.”
What stands out in this appeal is the procedural tone, which reflects a group that already understands how power works and is simply asking to be allowed into it.
Princess Edna Azura, the National President of the National Council of Women Societies (NCWS), made the urgency even clearer:
“We are here to tell the 10th Assembly that we are very serious. We are not forcing them; we are pleading because this bill will salvage Nigeria.”
A group that makes up nearly half of the population, standing outside its own legislature, asking carefully and respectfully to be included in decisions that shape their existence. This is simply exclusion, and it clarifies something often misunderstood: Nigerian women are not asking to take power from anyone, but for access to it.
The Special Seats Bill is a response to imbalance, a way to move women from the edges of governance into its core as participants. But it raises a harder question: is this a structural fix, or a careful workaround?
Reserving seats does not automatically dismantle the system that excluded women in the first place. Indeed, it creates space within it, and maybe, for now, what is needed is a disruption, even if it is not a full redesign.
Take Rwanda, where deliberate structural reforms, including gender quotas, have pushed women’s representation in parliament above 60 per cent. Senegal has also implemented measures that significantly increased women’s political presence.
These examples are to eliminate excuses, showing that representation at scale is a choice. If inclusion is consistently delayed, debated, or diluted in Nigeria, then it is a question of willingness.
See also: Why Nigerian Women Keep Showing Up for Each Other: HERtitude as a Case Study
What Does It Mean That Nigerian Women Govern a Country They Are Structurally Excluded From Governing?
It means being present in the nation, but absent in the rooms where its future is negotiated. It means being unmistakably visible and yet lacking the ability to influence decisions.
It means that laws about women’s bodies, safety, and economic realities are shaped largely without their input because the system has not made space for them to do so.
The Special Seats Bill cannot, on its own, solve that imbalance, but it forces a confrontation with it. Because at its core, it is about redefining who governance is for and who it has been working without.
Until that question is answered honestly, the gap will remain.
