GENDER BILLS: WOMEN RIGHTS ARE RIGHTS, NOT FAVOURS, SENATE HAS SOMETHING AGAINST WOMEN – ONYI MAMAH


Enugu: Mrs Onyi Mamah, Executive Director, Heroine Women Foundation, an Enugu based Women Advocacy group has condemned the rejection of the Gender Bills in the ongoing constitution Amendment by the National Assembly stating that “women rights are rights and that they (Nigerian women) were not asking for favours”
Mrs Mamah bared her mind on the controversy sorrounding the rejection of the Gender Bills by the National Assembly in a chat with our correspondent on Thursday.

“Human Right is supposed to be fundamental and if there is a violation at any point, it is a violence against the person. Not minding the person’s gender.
“Women are clamouring and advocating not because we don’t know that we are being ruled in a patriarchal society but because ordinarily this is not supposed to be like a favor. Human rights is supposed to be ordinary, it’s supposed to be redundant.
On the issue of the House of Representatives decision to rescind her rejection of three out of the five Gender Bills, she said;
“So my word for Femi Gbajabiamila and the House of Representatives leadership is that they have not done too well. Coming to take three out of the five bills is like saying “we are doing you people a favor”.
“These things are rights, these things are supposed to be considerable decisions for a society that wants progress for its women and females, especially when it comes to considering the vulnerability status of the women in the society.
“If the women can leave homes, if they can leave their circles, if they can be productive in whatever sectors of the society, is it when you extract them from the decision making processes of the society or remove them from governing councils of the society that will make the society balanced? We need to strike a balance. We need to consider the fact that the society cannot thrive without the uniformed addition of the women in politics.
“So, we are not impressed, trying to work on three and leaving the rest, it sounds like favor, we are not impressed, it doesn’t sound like progress”
The human rights activist had tough words for the Senate over its outright rejection of all the bills.
“Then for the Senate, they outrightly have shown that they have something against the women. What is it that about the Gender Bills that the senate must refuse and completely reject?
“What is about the equal opportunity that the senate must not find binding on a state as big as Nigeria, with a population of two hundred people and above?
“Nigeria is a signatory to Affirmative action, Beijing convention since 1985. Of all the signatories to that Convention, Nigeria is the most retrogressed.
“We are still having male dominated sectors in the country instead of balanced sectors in the country.
“Until women are allowed to occupy, at least 35% of the positions in the political parties, until our foreign born husbands are given indigeneship, until women are allowed to have a voice in the Legislature and be part of the deciding Council, nothing has actually been done.
And recently, Rivers State senator, Betty Apiafi, said something similar.
Ms Apiafi, who is also the Chair of the Senate Committee on Women Affairs, said the northern caucus of the National Assembly met prior to the day of voting, and agreed to reject all gender-related bills.
“The women actually lobbied a lot but what happened is that the northern caucus of the National Assembly – both House and Senate – took a decision not to vote on any issue concerning women.
“…Because of the bias that they have about women. They just don’t want women to come to the National Assembly. They just don’t believe that women have to be heard.