Nigeria’s Gender Equity Challenge

Ekemini Akpakpan

Thirty years after the Beijing Declaration on women’s rights, Nigeria has developed some of the most forward-thinking gender policies on the continent. The country has a National Gender Policy, a 35 per cent affirmative action target, and clear frameworks that support women’s economic empowerment and political participation.

Yet, reality shows that there is still significant room to translate these commitments into measurable progress. Women currently hold 4.4 per cent of parliamentary seats, and among Nigeria’s 270+ universities, only about 4.7 per cent have female vice chancellors.

In the financial sector, women lead strongly across various management levels, though they represent roughly a third of CEO positions.

These figures highlight not a lack of potential, but the opportunity and responsibility to better align our national ambitions with outcomes that fully reflect the talent and leadership Nigerian women continue to demonstrate. This reality shaped discussions at the recent WISCAR Annual Leadership and Mentoring Conference in Lagos, where leaders, policymakers, and advocates gathered under the theme ‘Claiming Our Future: Women in Leadership and Policy Transformation’. The central question was urgent: How do we move beyond policy conversation to measurable change?

The Implementation Gap in Practice

Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos and keynote speaker at the conference, Prof. Folasade Ogunsola said, “Policy is power. It determines whose voices are heard, whose work is valued, and whose rights are protected. When women are absent from policymaking spaces, policies themselves become gender-blind, and what is gender-blind in theory often becomes gender-biased in practice.”

Without women in the rooms where budgets are allocated and priorities are set, even well-intentioned policies fail to address real barriers. A transportation policy that ignores women’s safety concerns on public transit is gender-blind in theory but exposes women to harassment in practice. An agricultural policy that doesn’t account for women’s limited land ownership sounds neutral but entrenches inequality.

The implementation gap also shows up in laws that exist without enforcement. The Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act is one of Nigeria’s strongest legal tools for addressing gender-based violence. Women’s groups fought hard for this legislation, yet many states have not domesticated it. In states that have it, enforcement remains weak; though women know the law exists, they are also aware that reporting abuse often leads nowhere because the systems to investigate, prosecute, and punish offenders are underfunded and understaffed.

What Proper Implementation Looks Like

Implementation done right looks radically different. It means government ministries publish annual gender audit reports showing exactly how many women hold senior positions, how budgets were allocated across gender lines, and what specific actions were taken to close gaps identified the previous year. These reports become mandatory accountability documents reviewed by oversight bodies with power to recommend sanctions.

It means universities and corporations set transparent timelines for achieving gender balance in leadership, then report progress regularly. When the University of Lagos appointed Prof. Ogunsola as vice chancellor in 2022, making her the first woman to lead the institution, it demonstrated that the barriers keeping women from university leadership are institutional, not biological. Since 1960, only 38 women have been vice chancellors out of more than 720 appointments. If one of Nigeria’s oldest and most prestigious universities can be led effectively by a woman, why can’t the others?

Proper implementation also means investing in the infrastructure that makes women’s leadership sustainable. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu captured this in his address to the conference: “When women lead, societies thrive. When women’s voices shape policy, our institutions become stronger.” But for women to lead effectively, they need accessible childcare, protection from harassment, and workplace policies that don’t force them to choose between career advancement and family responsibilities.

From Conversation to Accountability

The WISCAR conference marked the graduation of 105 women from the Women in Law Mentoring Programme. Over 17 years, WISCAR has refined a mentoring model that doesn’t just build individual capacity, it creates pathways for systemic change. The WISCAR Mentoring book, which documents these insights and frameworks, has become a resource for organisations seeking to embed mentorship as a strategic tool for leadership development. The book shows that mentoring works when it’s structured, measured, and sustained, not left to chance encounters or informal networks that often exclude women.

These graduates now have the skills, networks, and confidence to pursue leadership in legal practice and governance. But their success depends entirely on whether the institutions they enter have been reformed to support rather than obstruct their advancement. This is where mentoring meets policy, individual readiness requires institutional accountability.

A central focus of this work is ensuring that mentoring outcomes are reinforced by institutional reform. In collaboration with partners in the Women in Leadership Coalition (WILC), including Women in Law and Advocacy Network (WILAN), Women in Management, Business and Public Service (WIMBIZ), and the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, WISCAR is championing three specific policy priorities. These include 35 per cent representation of women in government and appointive positions by 2027; 35 per cent representation of women in corporate leadership and boardrooms; and the adoption of progressive labour policies, including extended maternity and paternity leave. For the first time in Africa, civil society organisations, the private sector, and government have aligned behind a unified agenda for women’s leadership.

Sustaining momentum requires converting commitments into consequences. This means state governments must publish progress reports on National Gender Policy implementation. It means corporate boards face regulatory scrutiny when gender composition remains stagnant. It means institutions that consistently fail to meet inclusion targets lose legitimacy.

Over the next year, WISCAR will continue producing policy briefs that inform legislative advocacy and strengthening coalition partnerships that hold institutions accountable. But our primary vehicle for change remains mentorship. We are expanding our mentoring programmes across sectors because we have seen, over nearly two decades, that when women are equipped with knowledge, networks, and strategic guidance, they don’t just navigate existing systems, they begin to reshape them.

The WISCAR Mentoring book offers a blueprint for this work. It provides frameworks that organisations across Nigeria can adopt to institutionalise mentorship, not as an occasional initiative, but as a core strategy for building inclusive leadership pipelines. Mentoring creates prepared leaders. Policy creates the space for them to lead. Both are necessary, and neither works optimally without the other.

Thirty years after Beijing, Nigeria knows exactly what needs to happen. The policies and frameworks exist, but their impact depends on how intentionally they are carried out.

 The women graduating from leadership programmes across Nigeria are not waiting for that answer. They are building careers, influencing policy, and driving change with or without institutional support. The question is whether Nigeria’s institutions will rise to meet them or continue wondering why so few women lead while maintaining the exact systems designed to exclude them.

What this moment offers is a chance to bridge the gap between intention and reality. Strengthening implementation and accountability would not only honour the commitments already made, it would create conditions where women’s leadership can thrive, not despite the system, but because of it. Implementation and accountability are choices need to be made; the future we hope to see will be shaped by the choices made now. This is how we claim our future: by ensuring that policy becomes practice, and that every commitment translates into genuine opportunity.

—Akpakpan is the Executive Secretary, WISCAR