2015 Polls: Female Reps reduce to 14

The number of women who will be at the 8th House of Representatives has shrunk to 14 from the 27 in the outgoing 7th lower chamber.

The names of winners of the March 28 National Assembly poll just released by the Independent National Electoral Commission indicated that only 14 females won their election into the House.

Although, there are 23 constituency seats into which elections have yet to be conducted by INEC across the country, it is unlikely that the number of women will increase after the polls as majority of the contestants are men.



It implies that in a crowd of 360 lawmakers, there will be only 14 females.

Findings  showed that most women who contested the March 28 National Assembly election lost to their male contenders.

For example, out of the 27 females in the current House, only eight were re-elected for the 8th Assembly.

“The reasons are not far-fetched. You remember that right from the primaries, some of them were already out.

“Others simply voluntarily chose to withdraw due to the way things were designed apparently not to work in their favour.

“Many of those who made it to the general elections were also unlucky as they were defeated by the males in most cases,” a National Assembly official told newsmen in Abuja.

One of the lucky returnees is the Chairman, House Committee on Human Rights, Beni Lar.

Lar described the failure of many of her female colleagues to return as a “sunami,” which was beyond their control.

Lar, who is from Plateau State, was once the Chairman, House Committee on Women Affairs.

She argued that the women put up a spirited fight but just could not make it.

“It is really serious. Our number has really gone down this time.The ‘tsunami’ (failure of majority of members to win re-election bid) affected most of us. It will be tough but I believe the women will bounce back,” Lar said.

However, the Peoples Democratic Party outnumbered the All Progressives Congress in terms of female representation in the House, as nine out of the 14 women who won election to the incoming House were from the PDP, while only five belong to the APC.

As against the incoming House with only 14 females, the 2007-2011 Assembly had 24 women, which further increased to 27 in the 2011-2015 Assembly.