The Westminster Foundation Democracy (WFD) has called for a review of the strategies to achieve the inclusion of women after the “scandalous” reduction in the number of women elected during the last general elections.
Adebowale Olorunmola, WFD Country Director, said this on Tuesday during the political party support dialogue held in Abuja.
The dialogue was about developing modalities to make support for political parties more efficient in the period after the 2023 elections.
It was also incumbent on development partners to collaborate to improve the performance of political parties and not to duplicate efforts by working in isolation.
Olorunmola said development partners need to rethink their strategy when engaging with political parties on women’s inclusion in the post-election era.
“The result of the 2023 elections, and the grim result of having shockingly reduced the percentage of women in elective office, makes it necessary for development partners to reconsider the participation of political parties in the post-election era,” she said.
In the 2023 National Assembly elections, held on February 25, 11 women ran for Senate seats and 35 for House of Representatives seats. At the end of the elections, 14 women were elected to the lower house, while another three were elected to the upper house.
Olorunmola said that since 1999, donors and organizations have been providing support to political parties but despite the support the development of political parties has been slow.
“Since the return to democratic governance in 1999, stakeholders (civil society groups, implementing partners and donor agencies) have provided political parties with technical support to improve their operations.
“However, the development of political parties has been slow and has become a source of concern as citizens dutifully await better results and democratic dividends,” he said.
Speaking about upgrading political parties, Olorunmola said that political parties need to move from tokenism to ideologically driven platforms.
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He added that political parties need to open up to attract a mass membership and also ensure that they serve the interests of the masses, not those of a select few.
“Political parties must go from being symbolic in their commitments to adopting positive actions that allow for internal party democracy, as well as the inclusion of underrepresented groups, specifically women, youth, and people with disabilities.
“They must stop being largely exclusionary and start taking positive steps to become an open platform to attract mass membership, while carrying out activities that ensure that party decisions are made by members, and in the interest of members, and not of a few. cliques such that parties become less motivated by personality and money, but driven by what they stand for,” he said.
WFD is working with political parties with representation in government, NILDS and others to improve their inclusive practices, thus ensuring more effective participation of disadvantaged groups in decisions that affect them.
WFD is running the Inclusive and Accountability Program (IAP) on political party lighting in Nigeria.
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