Generation Equality - Nigeria: Youth, the only hope to meet the new challenges

I attended the Beijing Conference as an NGO actor who was already involved in popular human rights education towards citizen empowerment, with a particular focus on women’s rights. On return from Beijing, I have remained committed women’s human rights as I have engaged in: 

● Social action research about the situation of women’s rights; 

● Legislative advocacy to legitimize women’s rights as human rights in its many aspects for example increasing women’s representation in decision-making including politics;

● Supporting legislative reforms through bills drafting; 

● Teaching human rights including women’s rights in the formal legal education curriculum and I successfully introduced, alongside other colleagues, the course Gender and the Law in the formal legal education curriculum, supported capacity-building for legal educators to research and teach reproductive health rights in the legal; 

● Providing popular education on women’s rights to persons of all ages through community education. 

Beijing was a starting point; it was one of my fondest memories. I have great memories of it and especially good memories like the concerted efforts of Nigerian women to be part of shaping the global reform agenda for women’s rights. The memories of interactions with women from across the globe in the NGO Forum and the Beijing-built bond that women from all across the world share have continued to imbue me with a sense of mission. The setting of the agenda of the Beijing Accord was far-reaching in shaping my personal life, that of Nigeria and on a larger scale the global agenda. 

It would be difficult to deny the impact of stereotypes in our African societies. The latter continue to annihilate action plans and programs. Gender based stereotypes and discrimination persist as they are culturally (traditional and religious cultures) embedded and have been difficult to displace. Gender-based violence and marginalization of women in political participation are very widespread. Constitutional provisions on non-discrimination need to strengthened to accommodate gender-specific legislation like the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill. 

This fight to bring down these imposed paradigms must be the prerogative of young people. It is the next generation and must assume its responsibilities. I think the youth (female and male) (ages 18-35 years) should take the lead in the debate in terms of identifying the current gender specific priorities and in articulating the debates in the language and manner that is suitable to youths, all to foster ownership of the struggle. However, while the future is the youth, we must avoid underestimating the values, lessons and experiences older women

bring to the drawing table. Older women with significant experience should not be silenced as they have much to share from their experiences and can serve as mentors. Indeed, all hands must be on deck.  

In Nigeria, equality between men and women is indeed possible. For this, it will be necessary to go through several stages which in my opinion will be very decisive namely: 

● Develop and adopt a Gender Policy with a well-defined Implementation Framework that take in the multi-prong nature of needed interventions/actions; 

● Legislative reform especially constitutional reform is needed to provide an adequate overarching policy framework for legislation, judicial adjudication and administrative action on gender equality; 

● Use judicial process to demand accountability and justice for women’s rights violations; 

● Scale up social mobilization of women to galvanize all classes of women in multi-pronged social action for women’s empowerment; 

● Expand the provision of liberal education and improve overall quality of education to produce citizens who value inclusion and transparency. These values will help recreate and deepen the culture of accountability; 

● Increasing male involvement in action for gender equality; 

● Set a phased agenda for realizing gender equality in which achievable goals within a time frame are identified. 

The future will only be what we do today. Without doubt, there is evidence of improved acceptance on the part of government and private individuals of the standards and values of women’s rights as well as evidence of improved indices of women’s equality in Nigeria relative to 25 years ago. With that, it can be said that things can only get better. However, the pace of significant change has been slow relative to the vast number of resources invested in social action for women’s advancement. In addition, other challenges such as poor governance which have resulted in increased poverty, worsening quality of health care service delivery, insecurity creating the crisis of displacement and destroying of the accumulated physical, social and human, have implications for undermining the gains to date in relation to women’s rights and gender equality. These make it difficult to be very optimistic about the future of women in Nigeria. Nonetheless, because I know that women activists are unrelenting in their efforts, I am hopeful that all of these can create a groundswell of support that cannot be ignored. 

Ayodele Atsenuwa. 

Professor of Law. 

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Development Services) at the University of Lagos.