From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Deputy National Women Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Zainab Ibrahim, has advocated twinning formula as the lowest hanging fruit to ensure women inclusion and gender equality in politics.
She further explained that twinning formula is a policy adopted by political parties in some countries which involves reservation of elective seat of deputise to women, adding that women are demanding female vice president, deputy governors and vice chairmanship positions.
She spoke at an interactive session with newsmen in Abuja last weekend, stressing that if the APC had adopted the formula, there would have been 24 female deputy governors in the those states under the platform of APC.
The APC deputy national woman leader stated that apart from special seats advocacy, her office is also strongly clamouring for twinning formula across the country.
“Aside from the special seat advocacy that we are undertaking, we are also strongly advocating for twinning. The twinning does not even require any National Assembly (legislation). It does not require anything. It is just a policy by a political party.
“I got that formula in New York in 2016. I was at a conference and I met the vice president of the Gambia who was a woman and I asked her, Gambia is an Islamic country how come you became the vice president? She told me all their governors, have deputy governors as women because the ruling party adopted the twinning formula.
“So, it is just a policy pronouncement by the party and then it becomes effective. If my party, APC should adopt the twinning formula, we have 24 states under the APC controls, we would have had 24 deputy governors.
“To me, the lowest hanging fruit to women inclusion in politics is the twinning formula and we are working strongly on it. The Special Seats Bill will have some legislative backing at the end of the day, but when a party formulates a policy, it is subject to changes and that is why we are paying more attention to that of the Special Seats Bill,” she said.
Explaining further, she said: “But we are also doing a very high level advocacy for the twinning formula because countries that have attained up to 50 per cent and more like Namibia, Rwanda adopted the twinning formula….by the grace of God, it can even be achieved faster than the special seats bill.”
“We have some states who have already adopted twinning formula like when Yahaya Bello was governor in Kogi, all the Local Government chairmen, the vice chairmen were women. That is what we call twinning formula. We are now waiting to see such become a policy, especially of the leading political parties in Nigeria who have a large number of states they control,” Ibrahim said.
She further expressed confidence that by the time the formula is achieved, it will be the criteria for who women will support in subsequent elections.
“Every governor that tells us, number one, his deputy is going to be a woman, every local government vice chairman is going to be a woman. What else do we want from any governor, rather than to give him our 100 per cent support?
“I believe that Mr President, sooner or later, is going to adopt that for us and you will see how every Nigerian woman will support Mr President, by the grace of God,” Ibrahim added.
