| The female factor
By Chris Ngwodo
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Is there an emerging female factor in Nigeria’s politics
and governance? This question is being posed quietly in some
circles of thought. In the annals of Nigerian antiquity, women
have played prominent leadership roles. Students of history
readily recognize names such as those of Moremi and Queen
Amina, Zaria ’s greatest monarch. Others such as Margaret
Ekpo and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti stand out in the nationalistic
politics that forged Nigerian nationhood.
The epiphany of the nineties was the emergence of the Nigerian
woman in many boardrooms across the landscape of corporate
governance. The glass barrier that had kept them languishing
in the lower cadres was broken. The phenomenon even inspired
the publication of a monthly magazine, Corporate Woman, which
was tailored for the business savvy upwardly mobile woman
of the nineties. Although the publication folded up soon afterwards,
the point had been made. The rise of corporate chieftains
like Ndi Okereke-Onyuike and Cecilia Ibru indicated that women
had come to stay in the gilded corridors of corporate Nigeria
.
Today, one of the most under-reported trends of our present
democracy is the apparent female factor in the polity. President
Obasanjo’s administration is undoubtedly the most gender-sensitive
ever to have graced the national stage. Most instructively,
women have not been offered the usual sop or token appointment
contrived to demonstrate an official sensitivity to the need
for gender equality or “women empowerment.” Instead,
women are occupying strategic roles in the administration
and are driving some of its important policy measures.
The more popular examples would be people like Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
ex- minister of finance, and also of foreign affairs, who
headed Nigeria ’s successful campaign for debt relief
and oversaw the opening up of the Nigerian economy. Professor
Dora Akunyili of NAFDAC has won plaudits locally and internationally
for her campaign against counterfeit pharmaceuticals. However,
many other leading women are redefining public administration
and are playing critical roles as change agents.
In various trouble spots of our social economy, these women
are at the forefront of reconstructive efforts. Dr Oby Ezekwesili
is one of the leading lights of this administration credited
for bringing a measure of sanity and transparency to budgetary
protocol during her tenure at the Due Process Office where
her painstaking thoroughness earned her the sobriquet “Madam
due process.” Thereafter, she oversaw the remarkable
rebranding of the Ministry of Solid Mineral Development (MSMD)
and inspired the revival of the hitherto moribund solid minerals
sector.
Recently, she was appointed Minister of Education and has
wasted no time in unfolding an ambitious program of reform
to revamp the sector. Her successor at the MSMD is another
woman who comes with high recommendations, Leslie Obiora,
a law professor from Nsukka, Stanford and Harvard. There are
still many others out there. From the privatization czarina,
Irene Chigbue at the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and
Finance Minister, Esther Nenadi Usman to Ifueko Omogui of
the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and Amina Ibrahim,
Special adviser to the President on Millennium Development
Goals, women are handling with dexterity some of the most
challenging portfolios of Nigerian public sector management.
Under this government, we have seen the appointments of women
into office for the first time as Ministers of Finance, Foreign
affairs, and Supreme Court judge (Justice Maryam Aloma Mukhtar).
We have seen a succession of competent women in office, for
example, Professor Joy Ogwu’s succession of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
at the foreign affairs ministry.
What does this tell us? Is there perhaps a larger message
implied by this sudden rise of women? There are those who
will quarrel with the apparent implication of gender psychology
in this piece. Some may even find it sexist. However, I believe
that there is something to be learned from the near wholesale
success of women in public management positions. It is a social
trend worth exploring for insight into the sociocultural trajectory
of the country. The newfound prominence of women in what is
essentially a conservative masculine culture superintended
by a patrimonial state is instructive.
In oriental philosophy, the concept of the yin and yang conceives
a balance of inverse factors as a stabilizing principle of
the universe and of human society. For example, there is the
balance between right and left, light and dark, night and
day as well as male and female. The yin and yang mirrors the
principle of magnetic polarity in which the relational balance
between two opposite poles is what creates a magnetic field.
There are parallels to the yin and yang concept in human institutions
as well. Corporate theorists have since discovered for instance,
the leadership and management dynamic in corporations. Leadership
and management are two different factors that must function
in harmony if a corporation is to grow.
They represent the X and Y chromosome of the institutional
genetic code. Philosophically speaking, leadership reflects
the male principle while management is the female principle.
What some have called the feminization of management in the
corporate sphere flows from this hypothesis. It has led to
the influx of women in corporate management circles that used
to be traditionally male territory.
The new thinking is that on the average, women possess greater
managerial aptitude, emotional intelligence and inter-personal
skills, all of which make for greater efficiency in the realms
of management and yes indeed, public administration. Leadership
as a male principle can define vision and direction and address
intangible goals. Management as a female principle addresses
the economics and details of fulfilling the vision.
The feminization of public administration may hold the key
to the redemption of the Nigerian public sector and with time
could pave way for the entry of women into politics, which,
in some sense, is the highest level of management. The penetration
of Nigerian politics by such feminine values as emotional
intelligence could help defuse the various tensions in the
polity that are often rooted in and exacerbated by male egocentrism.
Women generally bring to bear upon their assignments a maternal
reflex to “nurture” the society thus raising the
nation and raising the people rather than ruling them.
The yin and yang concept as a social engineering tool is essentially
about balance and complementarity. Just as the irreducible
building blocks of human society are the man and the woman,
the balance of the male and female principles can be entrenched
throughout our institutions to stabilize them. The goal is
to create in our society a positive equilibrium that adheres
to the true order of things, a state of complementarity between
the two factors that drive growth and development.
The most advanced nations of the earth are those that have
achieved complementarity; whereby the alpha male principle
in the public square and the market square is tempered by
the female factor. The effect is that such balanced societies
are fully leveraging their human resource potential and reaping
profuse benefits. On the other hand, societies that entertain
cultural gender restraints are not found in the league of
the world’s most developed nations and are not likely
to arrive on that plane anytime soon. In such patrimonial
societies, male domination is the rule and women are relegated
to the role of subservient accessories to male needs.
During the industrial age where brawn and brute strength were
the key currencies, the hunter-gatherer model of manhood was
sufficient to sustain the society. Obviously, the man possessing
greater physical strength than the woman was suited for the
rigours of factory work. The alpha male was the breadwinner
of the family and the ruler and manager of the community.
The knowledge economy of the information age has led to a
rethinking of the social order. Brains and not brawn are the
new currencies of the 21st century. There is nothing to suggest
a disparity in aptitude between genders although some studies
suggest that both sexes have roles for which they exhibit
natural propensities. In this age, therefore, to limit the
role of women or promote cultural restraints on the role of
the woman is to implement the destruction of a society’s
human resource potential and a blatant waste of human capital.
The emphasis on the education of the girl child is thus a
welcome trend. As we have seen of recent, the Nigerian woman
has a lot to offer her community and her nation. Human capital
aggregates both the male principle and the female factor.
It is the complementarity of both that will drive economic
growth and social progress in the 21st century.
Ngwodo writes from Lagos.
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