Nina Mba’s work remains one of the most extensive documentations of women’s political involvement in Nigeria. Prior to colonial intrusion, societies in what is now known as Nigeria had several documented instances of women with high political and military influence, from Queen Amina (modern-day Zaria) to Iyalode Efunsetan Aniwura (Ibadan) and Queen Kambassa of Bonny (modern-day Rivers). Scholars like Mama have noted that the British colonial administration’s all-male army, which excluded women, set a precedent for male dominance in governance. We also see this precedent in the first occurrence of a quasi-democratic election in 1923 under the Clifford constitution of 1922. As Francis Adigwe notes, the colonial legislative body previously had no elected Nigerian members, so four seats in the Nigerian Legislative Council were opened for election: three for Lagos and one for Calabar. The electorate was restricted to adult men who were educated elites, had a gross income of 100 pounds per annum, and had lived in the choice area for twelve months. While this election represented the first elected positions for Nigerians in the colonial government structure, it also established a colonial legacy of exclusion based on gender, class, social position, literacy level, and ability. This explicit exclusion of women became a catalyst for their organizing and demands for political rights. 

In the 1960s, during the early independence period, there was a significant regional divide in women’s enfranchisement between the southern and northern regions. The northern region was unwaveringly opposed to women being given the right to vote, so only women in the former southern regions were enfranchised in the 1950s, with universal suffrage coming later in 1976. Southern women like Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Margaret Ekpo, and Constance Cummings-John have become synonymous with early women’s political participation in Nigeria. This was not without tensions, as Ransome-Kuti became a founding member of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), the only woman in a group of seven in the 1950s. As this council transformed into a political party, pressure mounted on civil societies—many of which Ransome-Kuti had founded or been part of—to align with the NCNC’s interests, including the National Women’s Union (NWU) and the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies (FNWS). Ransome-Kuti vehemently refused this integration (this has been extensively documented by Mba, Cheryl Johnson-Odim, and Judith Byfield) as she foresaw the trap of women’s assimilation into masculinist politics. Instead, she wanted women’s organizations to remain independent of political affiliations to focus singularly on the upliftment of women for whom nationalism, gender, motherhood, class, and development were inseparable. 

Disagreeing with Ransome-Kuti, Ekpo resigned from NWU and FNWS in 1954, citing that they were at odds with the politics of NCNC. Ransome-Kuti herself would eventually leave NCNC in 1959 and go on to form her own political party, the Commoner’s People’s Party. This naming choice, viewed through the lens of Ransome-Kuti’s Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU) politics, we can deduce was centred on the transformative intersectional politics underpinning a feminism for the 99 per cent. While this might point to a conclusion that women in the South were more politically active, Hajiya Gambo Sawaba, arguably the most frequently jailed political activist in Nigeria, was one of the few northern women activists contesting this disenfranchisement and forming coalitions with southern women to campaign for the vote, an activism for which she was repeatedly punished. 

Throughout the First Republic (1963-1966), women’s political influence was largely limited to civil societies, beginning with the first national women’s organization in 1947, the NWU. A singular departure occurred during Yakubu Gowon’s military rule when Nigeria’s first female novelist in English, Flora Nwapa, became the first female commissioner (minister) in 1970. Nwapa served as minister of health and social welfare in East Central State from 1970 to 1971, and as minister of lands, survey and urban development from 1971 to 1974. While Gowon had supported giving women the right to vote in 1973, he faced opposition from northern men. According to Mba, it was under the Olusegun Obasanjo regime in 1976 that universal suffrage was attained, when the Draft Local Government Edict No. 189 of 1976 set non-gendered qualifications for voters: being over 18, born in the area, resident in the area, and able to prove payment of tax. Mama and Mba argue that this was not particularly due to a commitment to women’s liberation but was triggered by a move towards national unity and efficient administration, as different electoral laws for different regions were seen as divisive. This makes one wonder why the North and the South till date have continued to have different criminal and penal codes, where the latter is essentially a law encoding misogyny, paedophilia and the systematic disenfranchisement of women and girls in northern Nigeria. Is national unity and efficient administration only considered when there is a benefit to granting women rights because of their sheer voting power?  

Resistance continued in the North, with the ministry of information in Sokoto declaring that women would not vote in the 1976 local government elections. However, gender-segregated voting booths were provided in northern states. Despite these restrictions, women contested in these elections, including Gambo Sawaba, who won a seat unopposed on the local government council for the Sabon Gari District in Zaria. Her nomination was paid for, filed, and supported by young men and women in her ward. Mama further mentions that six women were elected in total across the northern states, including Sawaba. In Anambra state, eight women were successful in their bids for local government positions. The elections also saw a small number of women winning seats in local government councils in Lagos and Oyo states. However, despite these successes, in these elections that marked Nigeria’s universal suffrage, women represented only a tiny fraction of the 299 local government councils, thus marking the beginning of unrepresentative women’s political representation in Nigeria. 

Fast forward to the Buhari-Idiagbon regime, whose War Against Indiscipline programme led to increased harassment of women, further regressing women’s rights and participation. After this regime ended in 1985, the General Babangida era brought a time when women realized they had to adapt to the grain rather than go against it to gain power. Here I am inclined to share Mama’s interpretation that this was First Lady Babangida’s vision, further driven by a need to exploit the gender question in a world that was demanding gender equality as a condition for economic aid. We can especially support this interpretation by looking to the period her tenure (1985-1993) coincides with, the aftermath of the UN Decade for Women, the rise of gender mainstreaming in international development policies, and the felt impacts of SAPs on women, creating both pressure and opportunity to address grassroots women’s issues. However, as discussed earlier, these initiatives hindered rather than enabled genuine political participation of women, a legacy that has persisted post-Babangida regime. In 2000, Ifi Amadiume made a connection between ‘cults’ of African first ladies and the phenomenon of elite, white feminists in European community organizing, which Black and African feminisms have challenged as exclusionary and performative. Their politics of non-representation is evident in the internal workings of their charities, civil organizations, and foundations, driven in numbers by illiterate lower-class women whose roles are delimited as political cheerleaders and welfare subjects, and who are often unaware of existing national or international gender equality laws or affirmative action.