The Legal Defence and Assistance Project (a coalition partner to Advance Gender Equality) has demanded removing ‘he’ and ‘chairman’ from the Nigerian Constitution to reflect gender equality.

LEDAP’s Senior Programme Manager, Pamela Okoroigwe, said there was a need to strategise on how to increase women’s representation in government.

She stated this in a meeting with Taiwo Oluga, Chairman of House Committee on Women in Parliament.

Ms. Okoroigwe said such a strategy was most necessary as the National Assembly was amending the constitution.

She also recommended that amending the constitution to change the language to reflect all gender.

She demanded that ‘he’ as used in the constitution should be removed and replace ‘chairman’ with ‘chairperson.’

Ms. Okoroigwe added that the constitution’s amendment should reflect the 35 percent affirmative action for women in political parties’ candidates.

According to her, INEC can be empowered by the constitution to enforce it by deregistering political parties that fail to conform.

Ms. Okoroigwe explained that the constitution’s amendment should include mandating that a man and woman occupy offices of chairperson and secretary of political parties at all times.

She argued further that the amendment should also reflect 35 percent affirmative action in ministerial appointments and the Judiciary.

Also commenting, the Programme Manager, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, Okeke Anya, said the SAGE was a USAID-supported project.

Its aim to drive a campaign to increase the number of women in governance across all tiers. Mr. Anya added that the organisation was working on a political party advisory group to engage political parties to produce more female candidates.