Senator representing the Rivers West senatorial district, Ipalibo Banigo, has said that women in the senate do not see themselves as different from their male counterparts.
Naijaonpoint reports that Banigo made this known while speaking on ‘Inside Parliament’, a programme on AIT.
Banigo said women in the upper legislative chamber are treated as equals, but at some point, they elect someone as leader.
The senator also decried the ‘extremely low’ level of female representation in Nigeria’s political space, stating that with women making up nearly half of the population, they should not have less than 10 percent representation in elective offices.
She said, “It goes without saying. We don’t need any gainsaying to say that Nigeria should have much less than 10% representation for a country that women are about half of the population.
“In the senate, we are all men. We are all equal. We are all equal people.
“It’s just that at some point, we have to elect some people who will be like leaders. But all of us are equal.
“So even though we are just very few women, we actually don’t see ourselves as being different from anybody else there.
“And we do have very capable women who can do the job.”
Speaking further, Banigo said she used her time as the first elected female deputy governor in Rivers state to drive inclusion.
She added, “In my state, for instance, I was the first ever elected female to be deputy governor for two terms, eight years.
“And I saw it as an opportunity to support the cause of women in vying for political positions.
“For example, Rivers state was the first state to politically support the election of women as vice chairmen in all the 23 local government areas.
“We were the first state. And also to have some quota for women as councillors in the local government area, depending on the number of wards in each of those areas.
“And after that, I noticed that some other states also followed this. But we were the first state.”