Warns, NIGERA faces democratic stagnation if parties continue to sideline women in ongoing primaries.
*calls for sanctions for Political parties that fail to meet affirmative action targets for women
The Executive Director of Gender Strategy Advancement International (GSAI) Adaora Onyechere Sydney-Jack, has decried what she described as the structural and deliberate exclusion of women from the ongoing primary elections of political parties across Nigeria ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Sydney-Jack, while speaking to journalists in Abuja, also called for sanctions against political parties that fail to meet affirmative action targets for women, insisting that Nigeria’s democracy cannot thrive while women remain systematically sidelined from candidate emergence and party decision-making processes.
“There should be enforceable accountability mechanisms. Democracy cannot rely solely on moral persuasion.
Possible sanctions or incentives could include reduced public funding access, mandatory quota compliance, incentives for gender-balanced tickets, or electoral penalties for persistent exclusion.Several democracies already implement such measures,” she said.
The GSAI executive director said despite women constituting nearly half of Nigeria’s population and electoral strength, they continue to face significant barriers during party primaries, including exorbitant nomination fees, political intimidation, monetised delegate systems, and exclusion from critical negotiations where candidacies are determined.
She said, “the troubling reality is that the recent primaries currently ongoing across parts of Nigeria have shown little or no meaningful shift from the entrenched norm. Across multiple political spaces, women continue to report being sidelined, pressured to step down for male aspirants, excluded from strategic negotiations, or subtly threatened with political ostracization should they insist on contesting.”
According to her, political parties have continued to treat inclusion as campaign rhetoric while resisting genuine reforms capable of guaranteeing women equitable access to political leadership.
“In Nigeria, women participate massively as mobilizers, campaigners, financiers at grassroots levels, and voting blocs. Yet, when candidacy and power-sharing emerge, women are relegated to ceremonial positions often reduced to “Women Leader” structures without consequential influence over delegate selection, zoning, financing, or ticket allocation,” she stated.
The GSAI executive director argued that the exclusion of women from party primaries was not accidental but deeply institutional, sustained through opaque consensus arrangements, elite patronage networks and patriarchal power structures within party systems.
“These realities create a democratic bottleneck that excludes women before the general election even begins,” she said.
She explained that despite years of advocacy, women continue to struggle because advocacy has not yet sufficiently disrupted entrenched political power economics.
She said, “primaries in Nigeria are not merely democratic exercises; they are often transactional arenas shaped by financial leverage, elite patronage, and deeply gendered power relations. Women frequently encounter – exorbitant nomination fees, political violence and intimidation, cultural stereotypes questioning female leadership, limited access to campaign financing, exclusion from informal negotiation spaces where candidacies are brokered.”
She noted that countries such as Rwanda, Senegal, Namibia and South Africa had significantly improved women’s political representation through intentional reforms, including constitutional quotas, parity laws and gender-balanced candidate systems.
She said, “Political party primaries in Nigeria remain structurally exclusionary toward women despite constitutional guarantees of equality and decades of advocacy.”
Sydney-Jack warned that Nigeria risks economic and democratic stagnation if political parties fail to undertake reforms that promote inclusive participation, adding that women’s exclusion weakens governance, accountability and national development.
“Comparatively, countries that have intentionally expanded women’s political participation have reaped measurable developmental dividends. In Liberia, the emergence of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf symbolized not merely female representation, but a broader reconstruction of governance confidence after conflict. In Tanzania, the leadership of Samia Suluhu Hassan has further reinforced conversations around women’s executive leadership within Africa’s democratic evolution,” she said.
Recalling her personal experience, Adaora noted that, “I experienced it when I ran for elections in 2019 in imo state to represent my people at the okigwe constituency.
It is cultural because patriarchal norms still frame leadership as masculine. It is financial because elections in Nigeria are prohibitively expensive. It is institutional because party constitutions rarely contain enforceable gender mechanisms. It is political because power holders often resist reforms that could redistribute influence. In reality, these dimensions reinforce one another.”
She further urged the National Assembly, the Independent National Electoral Commission and political parties to institutionalise enforceable quota systems and ensure transparent primary processes ahead of the 2027 elections.
On practical reforms that parties can implement immediately to make primaries more inclusive, she said: “Several reforms are immediately achievable: Financial Reforms such as free or heavily subsidized nomination forms for women, public campaign financing support mechanisms, gender equity political funds, institutional Reforms, reserved delegate slots for women, mandatory quota systems within party executives, transparent digital delegate accreditation.
Security Reforms and zero tolerance for violence and intimidation during primaries.”
She said Nigeria’s political parties possess the institutional capacity to undertake such reforms.
