In what appears to have been a serious joke, President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday told a delegation of the Conference of Nigerian Female Parliamentarians (CONFEPA), at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, that the position of Vice- President Yemi Osinbajo was threatened ahead of the 2019 general elections.
The President stated this while speaking in response to the group’s demand for female vice-president of Nigeria. President Buhari, who had already declared his interest to seek re-election for another four year term, is yet to formerly announce whether he will run with Osinbajo as the Vice-President.
He said: “It is a pity the VP is not here, but I believe the Secretary to the Government of the Federation will brief him that his position is threatened. “It is only the vice president who is threatened. And if we win the next election, he may lose his position.” President, who continued in the jocularly manner asked the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SSG), Boss Mustapha, to convey the message to Osinbajo that his position was being threatened.
The President who told the delegation to disabuse the minds of other female politicians from their belief that men are aggressive, noted that men had been fair to them by allowing them to participate in politics.
He thanked the nation’s women for supporting him each time he contested presidential elections President Buhari told the delegation to ask their colleagues to extend the same support for his reelection bid.
On the request of the group for similar arrangements to be made in the states and senatorial zones, President Buhari said “I am not as powerful as you think”, noting that such a request could only be granted by a military head of state. He told them he had dropped the uniform for “agbada”.
Leader of the delegation and president of CONFEPA, Elizabeth Ativie, who had earlier told Buhari that anything he said on the delegation’s demand “will become policy and subsequently law”, specifically requested that, “whenever the president is a man, the vice president should be a woman.”
She also said only Buhari could ensure that “for every three senatorial seats in the states, one should be a woman; where there are nine House of Representatives (members), the men should take six and leave three for women.”
Ativie had also complained to Buhari thus: “Nigeria has gone through five elections since 1999. However, the political transformation is still male-dominated. The story of women in decision-making is yet to change for the better. Women are still very much marginalised in politics. “At present, in the Senate, only one of the principal officers is a woman and only eight of the 109 senators are women. The House of Representatives has only one female principal officers and 22 women out of the 360 members.
“There are less than five per cent of women representatives in the state Houses of Assembly. Your Excellency will agree with us that this trend has to be reversed. Nigeria needs to invest in women’s participation in politics by creating an enabling environment for women to thrive and tackle perceived systematic and cultural hindrances to women’s inclusion. “Currently, many African and European nations are daily finding ways to include more women in governance.
Some have elected or appointed women as heads of states, prime ministers, heads of foreign ministries and other key positions of decision-making. It will not be out of place, Your Excellency, for women to be given such opportunities in our dear nation.”
She appealed to Buhari to ensure “that the few women presently elected or appointed are retained, promoted to the next level and the number of female representation increased at the federal, state and local government levels.”
.new telegraph