International Women's Day



LETTER TO THE NIGERIA WOMAN


My Precious Queen of the Rivers Niger and Benue, Sunshine of the Rain Forest and the Sahel: I write this to you this, sixteen years into our mint-new millennium.To the world, that is sixteen years since 190 Heads of State and Government, including our own, adopted the Millennium Declaration in which they pledged, among others by 2015, to eliminate extreme poverty and hunger, as well as promote gender equality and empower women.In our country, it is sixteen years since we joined most of the world in again exercising the right to choose our government through the ballot box. That means it is sixteen years since Olusegun Obasanjo administration, sixteen years since he pledged to bury the old ways of doing things and to take Nigeria into the future.In these sixteen years, dear sister of mine, we have seen hope come, and go. We have known tongues that lie with experienced smoothness during the day, and stab with fatal ferocity at night. We have seen a country that, each time it has had a chance to ascend the hill of greatness, has instead been pushed into the valley of perfidy below. We have seen political promises grow from molehills to mountains, outstripped only by the quicker growth in the girth and the bank balances of the relatives of privilege.Sixteen years after we began, our democratic experience is in fragile tatters. Sometimes, it is all so serious all one can do is laugh; at other times, it is all so hilarious one has to frown in pain. In other words, we are going in circles. Despite all the pledges and promises and speeches and budgets, the water we did not have to drink is still the water we do not have to drink. The electricity we did not have is still the electricity we do not have. The corruption we claim to be fighting is the monster we have nourished.I know sister, I know you wonder why I am telling you all this. It is because I am holding you responsible. No, I do not hold you responsible for creating the mess. Not all of it anyway, but I must hold you responsible for permitting it to continue. In your loving hands, daughter of the land flowing with promises, lie the power to grab this situation and twist its stubborn neck in the right direction.Yes, I know you are busy. You have children, perhaps many of them. You run the home and perhaps hold down even a job. You look after the aged parents. You are educated, but are probably working hard to take another degree or certificate. Maybe you run the family business, as Oga is usually away at important official engagements or political party business. Oga is probably the one with access to your important documents, including your certificates and the family's voters' cards. Yes, you have a lot on your hands, and I congratulate you.Yet, that is exactly why I charge you with even greater responsibility for the future.Here is why. We need you, mother, not only to raise the kids. We need you, dear auntie and sister and grandmother, also to raise the country. If you are good enough to suckle the kids and teach them, you are more than qualified to nurture the country. If you are good enough to teach the leader, you are good enough to lead the flock.The question, dear queen of our land, is why you are still missing in this millennium. I see you at work: as home-maker, mother, and wife. I see you as student, professional, preacher. I hear you as you praise, guide, encourage and inspire. When will you also rise, speak, and lead?I know what the problem is. The men in your life. The men doing men things. All claiming to be politicians, as though politics were the career for which they trained. The question is that, whether the party is winning or losing, nothing has improved since this new lifestyle. There are just new villains in an old script, and your man and his friends are those villains.Oga's wife, the time has come to play your part as a citizen. And let us be honest,Oga's wife is not a job.the one who stays home to keep the kitchen and the bedroom warm so that the house is good enough for him when he comes home, you can do much better. You can stop pretending to be oh-so-important, barking at the help and the guards.But I do know you: you used to be nobody's fool. You have simply, lazily traded in your bright prospects and your obligations to the larger society. Look at that man you call stupid, the one in State House or in the legislature, the one you hate with such fierce passion. Are you just going to continue to hate him from this side of the television screen, or are you going to do something about it?Mother, why can't a woman be the President or State executive? No, it is not a gender thing, it has to be a question of who can do the best job, or we are all lost. If you are honest enough to say you are unqualified or unprepared, surely you can help find or persuade someone who is. And yes, you can continue to love your husband, in fact, I insist on it. But you know in your heart-don't smile now-that you have always been smarter than he is. You know he is egotistical, corrupt and lazy. If you seek true improvement, you must begin by helping to ensure that the wrong people do not assume high office. By the time you apply your third layer of make-up, they would have done so, again. Unless you are an angel who never complains about how bad things are, you must become involved.Tell your brother that politics is too important to be left to the politicians. Register to vote, mother! Sister, claim your voter's card back from your brother. Wife, tell your husband you want to do something to help, and then make him understand that if you have no voice, neither the kitchen nor the bed may be warm when he returns.What, for instance, is a women's wing of the party, a device that permits men to hold all the executive posts? Ask them to create a men's wing that is co-equal with the so-called women's wing, or else. Use their own logic against them to give women a higher political profile.Ask them for an equal number of female governorship candidates, or negotiate a complete gender mix and match in political contests. Your influence, of course, is not in only in the power of your tongue, as forceful as that must be; it is also in the volume of female votes that you must work to command. In other words, sister, even if the party chieftains do not listen to your concerns about changing the party structure to allow for more women, you can do even more by organizing and sensitizing the female vote statewide, beginning with your own. Each is useful to the other: the more high-profile women there are in the party, the easier it will be for you to attract young female voters; the more female voters you attract, the easier it will be for you to negotiate high-female profile positions.My point, dear lady of light, is that for too long, our men have been right there; in our country for no better reason than their gender. They emerged as the politicians,the wise and powerful ones who reserved the right to be wise and powerful. They have since been found to be empty-headed simpletons posing as prophets. That is how we got stuck in the mud, but the female constituency can engender great change, or be that change. The opportunity that comes your way in the next few months is huge. In these months, Nigeria woman, the motherland will be crying for the best of her children to come forward to restore its spirit.And unless you do something, lady, the same bloodthirsty leeches and their heirs will move into position. They have
made you cry before. They will make your children and their children cry. The great American poet, Margaret Walker, perhaps put it best. To paraphrase her, let a new race of women rise and take control.

Special thanks to Sonala Olumhense for the original works.

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