Spokesman of the House of Representatives, Hon Benjamin Kalu has said lobbying by the female gender stakeholders came in late as reason behind the rejection of women Bills by the lawmakers during the report consideration of constitution act amendment.
Kalu who is also Chairman of the House committee on media and public affairs disclosed this to newsmen in Abuja while at a media briefing.
The Abia born lawmaker explained that in view of the socio-cultural and religious sensitiveness of the issues, effective lobbying, sensitisation and consultations by the female gender and stakeholders across the country would have been intensified earlier to attract maximum support.
According to him, this lobbying was done a bit late. The advocacy would have started longer than now. You don’t lobby two days to an important issue like this.
“It goes beyond lobbying at the last minute. It takes a lot of reorientation, advocacy and sensitization to enable people to buy into this all important agenda because you can not play down on our current issues with regards to emerging democracy.
“One of which is our religious and cultural dispositions. These things play a role. We’re part of the society. Our culture and religion are part of the society. It needs a lot of advocacy by the civil society organisations, women group to push this agenda forward. It’s a wonderful agenda. But for people to buy into it even from the constituent not their representatives because Nigerians are shifting their focus to the representatives and their senators only. It was not the representatives and the senators that did the job. It was the instructions from their various constituencies. This is the truth that must be told.
“And if the House as an institution was not interested in this agenda, it wouldn’t have passed the first reading, second reading and be allowed to go to the committee level and be one of the issues mentioned on the day of public hearing which means that the institution has given it all the wills to succeed but the joy of canvassing for the support to change our long standing dispositions culturally and religiously which we can not wave away. It takes time. It has started well. We’ll keep pushing”.
“Let us do a fair comparative analysis. Most of these nations we are using to compare with Nigeria started somewhere. Now that this agenda has been stimulated in the minds of Nigerians let’s not stop there. Let the CSOs and women not give up. Let them leaverage what they have achieved in pushing for this so far”, he said.
While encouraging the women not to give up in their struggle, he assured that there is always time to review the constitution again as no law is cast on stone.
He therefore commended the Wives of the president, Vice president as well as the Minister of women affairs for supporting their womenfolk.
