Women protest in Abuja for reserved seats bill in National Assembly

Hundreds of women took to the streets of Abuja on Monday to demand the passage of a bill that would create women-only seats in Nigeria’s Senate and House of Representatives.

Several African countries, including Senegal and Rwanda, have boosted female representation through quota systems. Nigeria, which has no such arrangement, currently has just four women senators out of 109 and 16 female members in the 360-seat House of Representatives, according to the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC), a local NGO.

The proposed legislation, dubbed the “Special Seats Bill,” would create one women-only seat in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in each of Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Implementing the changes, however, would require a constitutional amendment.

“We want the legislature to work for women,” said Dorothy Njemanze, one of the organisers, who estimated more than 1,000 demonstrators took part in the protest.

Women’s groups from across the country converged on Abuja in a caravan of buses, vans, and a truck blaring Afrobeats music as they wound through the city’s wide boulevards before submitting signatures supporting the bill to a House committee holding a hearing on constitutional reform.

Advocates argue that reserved seats would address financial barriers, entrenched gender roles, and the domination of politics by male power brokers that continue to marginalise women in Africa’s most populous nation.

PLAC, in its legislative analysis, cautioned that constitutional amendments are “no walk in the park,” noting that any change would require approval by two-thirds of the National Assembly and 24 state legislatures.

Several previous attempts to create reserved seats for women have failed in recent years.