Obasanjo drops bombshell saying only two states nominated women for ministers during his tenure

FORMER president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has revealed that only two states nominated female ministers when he assumed office in 1999 after he asked governors to send him their list of ministerial nominees.

Speaking yesterday in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital while delivering a keynote address at a public lecture titled “My Understanding of Women’s Aspirations in Politics, Business and Nation Building, Chief Obasanjo decried the low level of women participation in Nigeria’s politics. At the event organised by the Initiative for Information, Arts and Culture Development in Nigeria and The American Corner, he urged women to keep pushing for more representation.

Chief Obasanjo said he was surprised that when he called the governors to nominate people as ministers, only two states sent names of women out of the 36 states in the country. He added that he took the courage to search and add seven more women to the two nominated, which he said made him the first president in Nigeria to appoint nine female ministers.

In his speech, Chief Obasanjo urged women to continue to agitate for more representation in politics, saying it was unfortunate that no woman was among the 50 people who drafted the 1979 constitution. He also charged women in the country to brace up by getting their PVCs and vie for elective positions in the 2019 general elections.

Chief Obasanjo said: “I am the first to appoint nine women as ministers. I called the governors to nominate people but all of them nominated men except two, so I appointed another seven women.

“We have women with good virtues in Nigeria. When I appointed a woman as minister of defence, there was uproar in the country and I said that there is nothing bad in it, she performed well and what a man can do, a woman can do better."

According to Chief Obasanjo, when you finish a meeting with men at 11 pm, you will still see them somewhere and when you ask them, they will say they are still holding another meeting at 12 but when you finish a meeting with women at 11, they will go home and sleep and the resolution of the meeting will still be the same at 8 am the next day.  He further eulogised the virtues of women whom he described as agents of change, community mobilisers, peace lovers and agents of truth.

“Women are agents of truth not only because they are our mothers, wives and daughters but I have highlighted some of the roles played by our heroines women like Queen Amina, Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and Madam Tinubu, that made their contributions. Any government that does not recognise women is a failure as when women have equal opportunities, change becomes faster.

“My dear sisters thank God that you have the opportunity to go to school, utilise the knowledge you have. We have to put our load by the roadside and expect people to help us, if you don’t do that, people will not help you," Chief Obasanjo added.