Reps vote against special seats for women, 35% affirmative action in party leadership recruitment

JONAS EZIEKE, Abuja 

The House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected the Bill seeking to provide some ‘Special Seats’ for women in the National Assembly and the thirty-six State Houses of Assembly as 208 out of the 360 members voted against the bill at the clause by clause voting by lawmakers on 1999 constitution amendment voting exercise.

This happened as one of the outcome of the consideration of report of the Special Ad-hoc Committee on the Review of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), where sixty-eight (68) clauses of the constitutional provisions were recommended for amendment.

The Bill proposed One Special Senate Seat and Two Seats of House of Representatives in all the thirty-six states and the federal capital territory Abuja.

If this proposal scales through, this will create additional One Hundred and Eleven Seats in the National Assembly, thereby increasing the number of Senate from 109 to 146, while the House of Representatives seats ‘ll be increased by seventy-four 74 to become 434.

The bill failed to scaled through after failing to garner the required 240 votes which is no doubt less than two third (2/3) of the number of the members.

The House members also rejected bill to provide 35% affirmative action on leadership position in political parties for women after failing to meet the 240 required votes since only one Hundred and Ninety-Five lawmakers voted in favour of the Bill.

Also a Bill for an Act to Alter the Provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 to Expand the Scope of Citizenship by Registration has been rejected at the green chamber by the lawmakers.

However, the House adopted financial autonomy for State Houses of Assembly and States Judiciary, the financial independence of local government councils as well as allowing states to operate air ports, railway, generate transmits and distributes power among others,

But a bill seeking to include Value Added Tax VAT on the exclusive legislative list was rejected, thus allowing states to collect VAT as well.

Although the House chamber adopted and also rejected some clauses in the consideration, only those adopted by the two chambers would make the list of provisions to be sent to the State Houses of Assembly for adoption as well.

During the voting at the House 208 lawmakers voted against the special seat clause for women, 13 abstained while 81 members voted in favour of the proposal.

Similarly at the upper legislative chamber, out of the 91 senators that voted for or and against the special seat clause, 30 voted for, 58 voted against while 3 legislators abstained from the voting exercise.

To political observers and public affairs analysts the pendulum of voting on the special seats for women in legislative houses clause is a huge blow and signals a death knell on the persistence and hullaballo about gender equality and women emancipation by women parliamentarians and women right crusaders.

Notwithstanding, however, the position of the apex legislative institution on this issue of political participation of women in parliamentary politics does not preclude the female gender from actively participating in any other form of political activity including standing as a candidate for an elective position or even voting in any election.

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