Half  the Population, Yet Women Still  Missing in Politics

As Nigeria’s political season gathers momentum, women are steadily losing ground in governance, raising urgent questions about democracy, representation, and whether Africa’s largest country is deliberately silencing half its population, writes Adedayo Adejobi

In the loud theatre of Nigerian politics, where ambition crackles through television studios, party conventions, and crowded campaign grounds, one silence has become impossible to ignore. Women are steadily disappearing from the room.

Not entirely, of course. They still organise rallies, mobilise voters, anchor policy conversations, and often carry the emotional weight of communities through economic hardship and political instability. Yet when the ballots are counted and appointments announced, the distance between women’s contribution and women’s representation becomes painfully obvious.

Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy and most populous black nation, now finds itself confronting an uncomfortable truth. At a time when many countries are widening political opportunities for women, the Nigerian political system appears to be moving backwards.

Female representation in Nigeria’s legislature has fallen sharply from 6.4 per cent in 2011 to roughly 4.4 per cent following the 2023 general elections. It is a decline that would be troubling anywhere, but in a nation of more than 200 million people, it feels particularly alarming.

For the African Women in Leadership Organisation (AWLO), the trend is dangerous.

In a strongly worded statement released amid ongoing political realignments and party primary activities across the country, AWLO warned that Nigerian democracy risks becoming increasingly exclusionary unless urgent corrective action is taken.

Dr. Elisha Attai, founder and global president of AWLO, believes the country has reached a defining moment.

“Nigeria cannot truly progress while systematically limiting the voices, visibility, and opportunities of half of its population,” he said.

His words cut through the usual diplomatic language that often surrounds conversations about gender inclusion. This was not framed as charity for women or symbolic representation. It was presented as a democratic emergency.

The concern is not simply that women are underrepresented. It is that the structures designed to produce political leadership often appear calibrated to edge them out altogether.

Across party lines, women frequently encounter financial barriers, opaque delegate systems, intimidation, entrenched patronage networks, and cultural assumptions about leadership that still overwhelmingly favour men. Even highly qualified female candidates often find themselves politically stranded long before the general electorate gets a chance to decide.

Nothing captures this tension more sharply than the reported disqualification of Senator Ipalibo Banigo, one of only four women currently serving in the Nigerian Senate and the only female senatorial representative from Rivers State.

For many observers, the episode became symbolic of a deeper institutional problem. If one of the few women who successfully navigated Nigeria’s brutal political terrain can still face exclusion from within party structures, what hope exists for younger or less established female aspirants?

Attai insists that inclusion must move beyond carefully worded speeches and ceremonial commitments.

“Inclusion must go beyond public declarations and be reflected in practical actions, policies, nominations, and electoral outcomes that intentionally create space for women to participate and lead,” he said.

That distinction matters. Nigeria is not short of conferences about women’s empowerment. It is short of measurable political outcomes.

For decades, the country has celebrated women rhetorically while marginalising them structurally. The contradiction is woven into nearly every layer of public life. Nigerian women dominate sectors of commerce, academia, media, entrepreneurship, agriculture, and civil society. In many homes, they are economic stabilisers and decision makers. Yet political power remains stubbornly concentrated in male hands.

The irony becomes even more striking when viewed against Africa’s wider political landscape.

Countries once considered less politically developed than Nigeria have made dramatic strides in female representation. Rwanda boasts one of the highest percentages of women in parliament globally. Senegal, South Africa, and Namibia have all implemented stronger gender inclusion mechanisms within political systems. Liberia, despite its own political complexities, elected Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, more than two decades ago.

It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that AWLO’s board chairperson, H.E. Chief Jewel Howard-Taylor, lent her voice to the warning.

“The future we seek, one defined by equity, collective prosperity, and sustainability, can only be built when women are given fair access to participate, lead, and contribute meaningfully at the highest levels of decision making,” she said.

Liberia’s political history, particularly its post-war reconstruction era, demonstrated how women’s participation can reshape governance, peacebuilding, and national healing. Her remarks subtly challenge Nigeria to reconsider what kind of democracy it wishes to become.

Because the issue at stake extends far beyond optics or international perception. Representation shapes policy priorities. When women are absent from decision-making tables, conversations around maternal healthcare, gender-based violence, education access, child welfare, equal pay, and social protection often receive diminished political urgency.

There is also the broader democratic cost. A political system that routinely excludes half its population weakens its own legitimacy. Citizens begin to see leadership as an inherited club rather than a truly representative institution.

This is especially consequential in Nigeria, where public trust in political institutions is already fragile.

Young women watching the current political climate may reasonably conclude that ambition comes with humiliation, resistance, and systemic obstruction. The danger lies not only in today’s exclusion, but in tomorrow’s disillusionment.

Yet AWLO’s intervention is not entirely pessimistic. Beneath the frustration lies a challenge, perhaps even an invitation, to political parties and stakeholders willing to rethink the future.

“It is not too late to do right by Nigerian women and by our society,” Attai said.

That sentence lands with unusual force because it recognises that the problem is not irreversible. Political cultures can change. Electoral systems can evolve. Parties can reform candidate selection processes. Governments can implement quotas or incentives that encourage inclusion. Public pressure can shift expectations.

But none of it happens accidentally. Democratic progress rarely arrives through goodwill alone. It emerges through sustained pressure, institutional courage, and a willingness to confront old assumptions about who deserves power. Nigeria now stands at one of those moments where history quietly asks a nation to choose what kind of future it intends to build.

A democracy that sidelines women cannot honestly call itself fully representative. A political system that narrows female participation in the very century demanding broader inclusion risks appearing not merely outdated, but fundamentally unjust.

The women fighting for political space in Nigeria are not asking for ornamental relevance. They are demanding visibility, authority, and a fair share of the national conversation. And increasingly, they are refusing to whisper about it.