What's left of Nigeria's feminist left?

The AIAC Podcast

This episode was recorded in the wake of the recent public controversy surrounding the suspension of Nigerian Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, following sexual harassment allegations she leveled against Godswill Akpabio, the current president of the Nigerian senate. Nigerian public commentary has been polarized by the controversy, reflecting a deeper division that is characteristic of debates about the current state of women in Nigeria.

On one hand, the suspended senator’s cause has been championed by supporters of women’s rights and feminist politics, who have grown increasingly vocal in the past two decades. This is evident in the rising prominence of women’s rights advocacy in the media and civic spaces, the proliferation of online feminist organizing, and the recurrence of feminist-oriented protests and organizations, such as the Market March protests against sexual harassment in 2019 and the role played by the Feminist Coalition in the 2020 #EndSARS protests. The gains of Nigerian women in recent times are also manifest in the realms of culture and international organizations. Leading lights such as acclaimed writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed have broken barriers for women within and beyond Nigeria. The measure of public outcry and protest that has accompanied the suspension of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan is best understood within the context of these moderate advancements in the struggle for women’s rights and recognition in Nigeria.

On the other hand, a powerful constituency—which appears to include the majority of her fellow senators—have accepted or even applauded the suspension of Akpoti-Uduaghan. Likewise, the handful of women in elective office, which, to be fair, are a vanishing minority in Nigeria, have given lukewarm support at best or been critical of Senator Akpoti-Uduaghan. This all suggests that despite the momentum in public discourse, popular culture, and international institutions, the achievements of the women’s movement in the realm of formal politics in Nigeria have been severely limited. The profound inequalities experienced by women in the workplace and across most other metrics of development appear as both a cause and consequence of their political marginalization under conditions of nominal democracy. Such political marginalization persists despite the fact that women’s organizing, in the form of popular organizations such as Women in Nigeria (WIN), played leading roles in the pro-democracy struggle. Nor has the emergence in recent years of a multimillion-dollar global industry for funding and programming for “women’s political leadership” improved the state of women’s political participation in Nigeria.

This contradictory situation—characterized by both new momentum and enduring marginalization—prompts critical questions about the state of the women’s movement in contemporary Nigeria. What are the origins and history of feminism in Nigeria? How did the forms of Nigerian feminist and women’s organizing evolve from the colonial and military period till the present? Why, despite the modest achievements of Nigerian women, has Nigerian politics remained desperately patriarchal?

In this episode, Sa’eed Husaini and Emeka Ugwu are joined by Hauwa Mustapha, a Nigerian feminist, trade unionist, and development economist, to explore the past, present, and future trajectory of Nigerian feminism.