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By Kelechi Nwaucha
After three years of implementing a campaign for gender equality and social inclusion, with focus on improving electoral integrity and accountability in Nigeria, non-governmental organization, Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre on Tuesday reviewed the impact of the project on communities and women in the South South states.
The campaign, tagged ‘The Improving Electoral Integrity and Accountability (IEIA) Project,’ and embarked on by Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, in partnership with Women’s Rights Advancement & Protection Alternative (WRAPA) and the MacArthur Foundation, sought to improve awareness on gender and social inclusion issues, especially with regards to electoral integrity and accountability.
Explaining to stakeholders, which included the permanent secretary, Rivers State Ministry of Women Affairs, Mrs Uche Uriri, state heads of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and National Orientation Agency (NOA), members of the academia, traditional rulers, community women and students at the Close-out event in Port Harcourt, Kebetkache’s executive director, Dr Emem Okon, said implementing the project has been “a very fascinating process,” given that campaigns on gender usually encounter resistance within social settings.
Giving an insight, through an address on ‘Women Inclusion in Governance and Accountability Issues in Electoral Process,’ Dr Okon noted that, “When you talk about gender, some people feel the campaigns are too much, women have taken over the place, and what exactly do women want. So it’s exciting, it’s fascinating, even when people resist. From their arguments, you use the opportunity to tell them why there is need for changes, why there is need for inclusion in decision making.
“So we talk about gender, the improved electoral integrity and accountability. How do we mainstream issues of gender into electoral processes? Then we use the National Gender Policy as a framework.”
Dr Okon said that one key achievement of the IEIA project is increased awareness. “Even if somebody does not understand what gender policy is, or even if the person has not seen a copy of the National Gender Policy, somebody has heard National Gender Policy.
“What we are doing now is amplifying, escalating the campaigns, so that many more people know about the gender policy and how to get it implemented.”
She stressed the fact that “Everybody needs to adopt the National Gender Policy,” adding that “by the time we adopt it in the state, it becomes a state gender policy. We take it to the local government, it becomes local government gender policy. We take it to your community, it is your community’s gender policy.
“If you don’t adapt it to your locality, you will think it is national gender policy, so it remains in Abuja. But you’ve got to relate it to the issues on ground. You’ve got to relate it to the state, to the local government, and then you see yourself inside the policy, and it helps you when you’re looking at interventions for your locality.”
Further harping on the need for inclusion in decision making, Dr Okon said “Because part of the population cannot always take decision, talking about inclusion is that women have to be on the table.
“Yes, men are knowledgeable, but there are peculiar things about women that if you as men sit down to discuss, you will not understand. There are peculiar things about women for you to be able to mainstream those things into decision making process. And then whatever plan or law or policy that is formulated will benefit everyone.
“But when that is not mainstreamed, you just make a law or policy or design a development program that is gender blind. And then you have everybody complaining. You can’t do anything, because they are not impacted by government’s program or by the law that is put in place.”
She pointed out that as “part of this project we campaigned for gender sensitive in the COVID-19 responses. We raised the issues of the palliative. It was gender blind. So you realize that pregnant women were suffering. Nursing mothers were suffering. A lot of other people were suffering. Because the palliative was just ‘give rice,’ everybody is given rice; ‘give indomie,’ everybody is indomie. We did not take into consideration women that are breastfeeding, or if there were other items, outside what was given, that they needed to survive? We put them in that role of nursing babies under the circumstances of lockdown.”
Program Officer – IEIA, WRAPA Nigeria, Zainab Abdurasheed, said WRAPA is a women-led organization that works with all stakeholders to ensure that women get justice at all levels.
“We carry out a lot of interventions around ensuring that women are involved in political participation, ensuring that women are not marginalized in society, in every space, they find themselves.
“One of our projects, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, which is why we’re here today, ‘The Improving Electoral Integrity and Accountability Project,’ is an offshoot of an initial project named the Gender and Accountability Project, which began in 2018.
“The project sought to ensure that women understood their rights and were able to demand accountability for their rights from duty bearers.
“So, with the end of that Gender and Accountability Project, the new phase of it, targeting improving electoral integrity and accountability, also came on board. Our partnership with Kebetkache Women Development Research Center in Rivers State is one of the partnerships we’ve fostered since the era of the Gender and Accountability.
“Today, we’re here for the Close Out of the Improving Electoral Integrity and Accountability Project, which has lasted three years now. We’re closing out in such a way that we want to ensure that the awareness created on the project is translated into action by all the various stakeholders starting from the family level.
“We have been implementing the National Gender Policy, which is a tool for national development that was revised in 2021 and approved by the Federal Executive Council in 2022, March. This has heralded the implementation by relevant stakeholders, the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs being at the forefront, and WRAPA implementing at the federal level, while partners like Kebetkache were supporting at the state and local levels.”
Commenting on gender balance and social perceptions surrounding it, Abdurasheed said, “The whole essence of implementing the National Gender Policy, part of it is creating the necessary awareness and enlightenment for citizens to understand their rights, to understand the concept of gender in itself.
“Gender, being a social construct, involves the social inclinations and what the society has put around being a man, a woman, a boy or a girl, in layman’s language. That’s what gender is about, which is different from being a woman or a man or a boy or a girl. These are two different concepts, gender and sex.
Against the backdrop of the forthcoming council polls in Rivers State, state coordinator of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Dr Young Ayo Tamuno, stressed the need for Kebetkache and its partners to continue the project on electoral integrity.
“I had actually wished that even if they are closing it out on the basis of the cycle of the program, that it should be opened.
“We have a peculiar situation, the peculiar situation arising from the fact that we are currently looking at the elections that are coming, I mean the local government elections, which have been scheduled for the 5th of October.
“And this is a time that we expect that Kebetkache should be optimal in terms of activities, in terms of mobilizing the participation of reverse women. Not only reverse women, because we are talking about gender, I mean streaming gender, for which they have been at the forefront, that in a time like this, that they should also be at the forefront, they should be empowered, they should be mobilized, you know, with the necessary resources by their financiers, towards making sure that they are in their communities, mobilizing the participation of reverse women,” he said.
Commenting on NOA’s collaboration with Kebetkache, Dr Ayo Tamuno said “It’s been wonderful. We have shared the experience. We have also made facilities available to one another. We are at the forefront of propagating government policies and programs. They are an NGO and also they have their own clear mandates.
“But there are several areas, several common grounds for all of us. And what is it? The fact that, first, that ultimately we should be talking about development, economic development. We should be talking about peace, for which they are also at the forefront,” he said.
Rivers State coordinator of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Mrs Chinwe Okoroji, commended the executive director of Kebetkache, Dr Okon, for her untiring efforts to create awareness and improve the lives of community women.
“We’ve been working with her for a long time. She has invited us on so many of the advocacy, which we’re able to participate. Even the rural people came and they asked us so many questions about our office and what we do (as human rights commission).
“We also directed them that instead of violence or their not knowing where to go to for help, they should come to our office. Some started to come to our office; because we don’t charge any money, it is free.
“Our knowing them (Kebetkache) has brought in so many reliefs to the rural people. Because that’s where we we’re having problems, to reach the rural people. So we used her to be able to reach to the people there in the community,” Mrs Okoroji said.
She noted that the issues confronting gender awareness are linked to culture, but expressed belief that “gradually, we’ll come over it.”
One of the beneficiaries of the project, Namon Grace Nwindee, from K-Dere in Gokana Local Government Area, said “I’ve benefited from this program. I’ve gained a lot from it. Because it made me to be bold to speak in the public.
“Though I was a teacher, the extent or the limit of my expressing my like and my dislike was not there. But since I came to this program, from the training and sensitization they are giving to me, I’m able to speak very boldly, very politely anywhere I am. Even in my community, I am recognized. When they call for community talk, and I come up to speak, both men and women normally conclude that you are wise in your speaking.
“I’ve been able to carry out activities that even one of the activities I took up in 2018, could have ended my life. Because I protested against Shell installation of one of their big pipeline. They wanted to change it. I said, you cannot take it. I’m a village head woman, and every youth joined me, and we protested against them and stopped them from doing their work until they called for negotiation,” she said.
Also present at the event were two students from Light Bearer Group of Schools, Modesta C. Romanus and Nmesomachi Ruth, whose participation in the Kebetkache-organized 2023 Secondary Schools Debate, ‘Promoting Gender Equality and Social Inclusion,’ saw their school clinch second place at the debate.
According to Miss Nmesomachi, the setting up of a ‘Gender Club’ in their was one of the fallouts of their participation.
She told our reporter, “We usually hold our meetings on Wednesdays. It has been functioning well and has been enlightening students on the importance of gender equality.”
Speaking on the impact on her school, principal of Light Bearer Group of Schools, Mrs Dorcas Bapakaye, said “I will start by appreciating Kebekache for coming to us. They have really exposed my children to so many outdoor activities outside the academic curriculum. Today coming again to hear more impactful lectures. I think they are going somewhere.
Papers delivered at the event include ‘Building an Inclusive Culture, from Awareness to Action,’ by veteran journalist and publisher of National Point Newspaper, Chief Constance Meju; ‘The Future of Gender Equality: Trends and Predictions,’ by Prof Chris Akanni, of the Ignatius Ajuru University of Education (IAUE), and ‘Strategies of Achieving Gender Equality through the National Gender Policy,’ by Dr. Carmelita Agboruegbe, director, Ministry of Women Affairs.
Other WRAPA partners present at the event were representatives of Women Advocate, Research & Development Centre (WARDC) and Nigerian Women Trust Fund.
Participants at the Close Out event for ‘The Improving Electoral Integrity and Accountability (IEIA) Project,’ organized by Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre in Port Harcourt
