It is not possible to write about women organisations making impact in Nigeria without mentioning Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA). This is a prominent NGO that has contributed monumental effort towards addressing women and girls’ rights issues. PLAC Beam spoke with their team; Yemisi Nathaniel, Senior Executive, Programmes & Projects Coordinator; Zainab Abdulrasheed, Project Officer for Improving Electoral Integrity & Accountability; and Habiba Ahmed, Communications officer.
About WRAPA: Vision, mission and goal of the organisation
ZAINAB: Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA), is a women’s rights-led organisation founded in 1999. It is over 20 years old and promotes social justice for women. We go all out to ensure that our interventions are centred around improving women’s welfare in every space they may find themselves.
YEMISI: WRAPA is about women, social justice and ensuring that women’s legal rights are ensured. We believe that even indigent women should enjoy their rights. Our mission majorly is to ensure that women are brought from the back to the forefront, ensure that women have what it takes to know their rights and to enjoy their rights at every point in time. Every repugnant practice against women and girls are addressed by WRAPA.
WRAPA is present in 36 States of Nigeria including the Federal Capital Territory. We have 22 coordinators who are active in 22 States while we work with other grassroot non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners in the remaining States. More so, WRAPA engages with women leaders of faith and culture and non-state actors. Our core programmes improve knowledge for women and girls to know their rights and capacity, not just to prevent gender-based violence (GBV), but also to seek redress. We have a legal unit, and we work with all the other legal units in other States based on wherever the complaint is made.
On WRAPA’s project interventions
ZAINAB: At WRAPA, every project intervention leads to the fact that women have access to justice in every sphere of human endeavour and also have good administration over justice. WRAPA always takes up initiatives that could also promote female political participation by empowering them and making them have fruitful lives as human beings. We currently have various projects funded by various international organisations such as MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, the EU-UN Spotlight Initiatives under the agency of UN Women, Malala Fund and AWDF, on various interventions centred around Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls (EVAWG), Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV), female political participation, engagements with leaders of culture and faith. In the legal department, we have many things going on concerning social justice for women.
On successes the organisation has recorded:
ZAINAB: In various aspects, we’ve had successes because we’ve had various interventions. Majorly, we’ve had interventions centred around SGBV, Violence Against Women, and various beneficiaries have been engaged. With this, a lot of women have been given their freedom from such violence with support from the legal departments well as various empowerment initiatives like capacity enhancement for women and girls on various projects like Malala i.e., the education project. We have put structures in place where women now understand their rights and are willing to speak for their rights. We have projects that are funded by the MacArthur Foundation as well. On the impact of that project, we have an ongoing electoral integrity project which is centred towards the forthcoming election. Part of the sensitization of our gender and accountability project was on Raising Women Voices. Women were able to raise their voices against corruption and demand accountability from duty bearers in every sector of governance such as education, provision of health facilities, participation in governance, inclusion generally because women have been identified to be among the first marginalised groups as well as children and Persons with Disabilities (PWDs). This is evident. Most of these women came onboard to speak for themselves after they were part of the project.
YEMISI: In February 2014, WRAPA was one of seven Non-Profit Organisations around the world that received a MacArthur Award for creative and effective institution, and this gave birth to the resource centre that WRAPA now has. WRAPA has been a part of the Legislative Advocacy Coalition on Violence Against Women (LACVAW) – one of the organisations that ensured the passage of the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act (VAPP). Also, WRAPA was very instrumental to the recent domestication of the VAPP law in Sokoto. WRAPA brought together about 21 members of the House of Assembly, the Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, the Women Affairs Commissioner and Permanent Secretary and Director Women for a review and validation after which the VAPP law in Sokoto was passed and assented. Recently, WRAPA worked on the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill (GEO Bill) that was proposed to the National Assembly. We are hoping that going forward, in some other projects that we will be starting soon, WRAPA would be able to ensure that the GEO Bill gets to a point where it will be accepted. On the Plateau and Kaduna axis, WRAPA was part of the campaign for the domestication of the VAPP Act and the GEO law in Plateau State and currently working on the implementation of these laws in those States.
Challenges the organisation is facing or faced in the course of work
YEMISI: We are coming from a civil society background. When 80% of your earnings or income is external, it then means that there is going to be a challenge if those funding should cease. Funding is not forever and so when it stops, you see that there are still unresolved issues with interventions lacking sustainability.
ZAINAB: I would like to speak to the implementation of various projects. A particular challenge is the social norm and values of the communities and citizens we work with. Social norms have been a big barrier to a lot of interventions that WRAPA has undertaken. In most cases, this is the crux of the matter at the beginning of the project design for every intervention. The social norms of every beneficiary have to be taken into consideration to make sure that there is a big shift in behavioural pattern before the project can have a meaningful impact. In addressing this, we always put this into cognizance during the design aspect of every intervention because whether we like it or not, it still pops up in every way.
On WRAPA’s perspective on the political environment for women
YEMISI: Not much has changed especially with respect to political participation of women. However, we note that women are coming out more than before. In the past, we would see a case of a woman only. Then, women hardly came out to say, “I want to be Governor”, “I want to be President” but in the 2015 and 2019 elections, more women came and participated, showing a lot of improvement on past years. Getting to be voted however, remains the core challenge be it at primary or secondary voting level. Changing political terrain is about ensuring affirmative actions Nigeria has signed on in treaties, policies and international frameworks. It is about the policy shift. If the right policy framework is not implemented, then we might likely not see the change we are hoping for. Thanks to the April 6th obtained judgement at the Federal High Court Abuja reserving for Nigerian women 35% of all appointable, elective and public appointments and positions. This is a major landmark and should usher in a change in narrative when and if implemented.
ZAINAB: The dynamics in politics have not been constant and that’s also part of why it’s been this way. At this point, it is important to make sure that women have the capacity to aspire to leadership positions. We try to see that our designs for interventions contain things like mentorship for younger women to make sure that their voices are heard, they are able to come to the limelight. We try to support them so they are visible to get aid from various organisations that may want to key into their aspirations. Also, we are trying to make them see reasons that if they want to contest, they have to put their mind to it because at times, when you really look at the aspirations, it is not deeply rooted. So, we are looking at how women will agree to come out for the sole aim of leadership.
On the major reason for underrepresentation of women in politics
ZAINAB: I think the reason for underrepresentation is custom and values, it cuts across every culture and tradition in Nigeria. We also have religion. That aside, some of the policies in place do not favour women’s political participation as such. That’s why constitution review processes are being put in place. Recently, we saw what happened earlier in March (2022) when Gender Bills got kicked out by the National Assembly’s. Right now, we are trying to engage that arm of government to make sure that they embrace these bills and give women an opportunity to run.
YEMISI: Some reasons for underrepresentation of women in politics are not having the right gender policies in place, social norms and patriarchy. Some other problems include powerful persons that have been on ground who would not want to shift base like we are seeing in the National Assembly. Many women are not financially capable to pick up nomination forms. We cannot move forward until there’s been a policy shift in the right direction.
On what can be done to address the low representation of women in the legislature
YEMISI: It should not stop at the protest we had at the National Assembly on the rejection of the gender bills. Underneath, work is ongoing to ensure that all the States of the Federation are able to carry the same concerns to their various legislators. If you follow the trend, I think Kwara State has said that 35% of appointive positions would be reserved for women. Ogun State has also agreed to 35%. We need to work with people at the grassroots and with the legislators to ensure that these five bills that were rejected would eventually receive acceptance at the National and State levels. That will ensure that women participate more in politics, both in elective and appointive positions.
ZAINAB: For the grassroot, various women-led organisations are also organising sensitisation activities to make women understand what these bills entail and help them raise their capacity to aspire to leadership positions even from the grassroot levels.
On what WRAPA is doing to address the low representation of women in the legislature
HABIBA: Recently, on social media, we hosted a Twitter Space titled ‘Nigerian Women in Politics’. A lot of women do not even know what happened in the National Assembly and what women are really protesting about. So, we created a platform where women can come together and have one agenda, one objective in mind, which is to be in electoral and political processes, to come into Nation building and have a strong leadership. So, it’s more of enlightenment on social media, more enlightenment as well for grassroot women, not only to the legislators but to the women who vote when it comes to the elections.
ZAINAB: Looking at political participation as well, directly or indirectly, social norms, behavioural pattern, upbringing and the likes, still have a critical role to play in affecting the gender bills that were thrown out. If we look at the geo-cultural practices in Nigeria and the male dominance, patriarchy and the likes, we see social normative actions come to play. So, I believe that with the intervention strategies we’ve put in place, a lot has changed and the narrative of political participation of women in Nigeria can follow suit as well. That’s what we are about on the Electoral Integrity and Accountability project for now and that’s why the National Assembly has been on the front burner for most of the women led NGOs which WRAPA is part of. We’ve been collaborating fervently with a lot of them on this issue to make sure that 2023 holds a better hope for women in political offices as well as appointive positions.
YEMISI: Another thing to do is to engage the grassroot more to ensure that they can demand accountability on the issue of women not being adequately represented in political leadership. We already know that most elections are won by engaging most of these women. They are the ones that will go out there to vote and support politicians. They are the ones that will be there to vote them on election day. I think there should be a change of orientation of their mindset. WRAPA went to some markets in FCT to ensure that the market women were part of the protest at the National Assembly. We however don’t want action for one day. Therefore, we are targeting their mindsets and enlightening them to see how policies affect them and how the government should be able to deliver on commitments.
If sensitisation could address the mindset which as a result of social norms limited women to the kitchen only to engage them as mercenary to win elections, Nigerian grassroots women will become a support system to ensure that women political aspirants succeed. I know that women don’t even get to the primaries, if they don’t succeed in the primaries, how can you talk of voting for her? The few that succeed are enticed with political appointments. We need more advocacy to party leaders, party caucuses, to ensure that gate keepers of parties guarantee that women will get to the forefront, not just stop at being women leader. Voting for women would not be a problem but they have to get to the point of being voted for.
About Current WRAPA Leadership
Saudatu S. Mahdi, Secretary General of WRAPA
Saudatu S. Mahdi is the Secretary General of WRAPA and heads the organisation. She is also a towering figure in the women’s rights movement.
Under her leadership, WRAPA has offered legal aid and counselling support to over 25,000 women across Nigeria, positively impacting the lives of abused women and girls. WRAPA activities include sensitization, dialogue, education support, economic empowerment and shelter for abused women.WRAPA has also gained a positive reputation and expertise, under her leadership, for touching the lives of women by increasing awareness and respect for women’s human dignity as well as positive shifts in institutions of faith and culture. It has also created a niche in managing large partnership platforms and Coalitions around Elections; Legislative advocacy for legal and policy reforms as well as action based spontaneous movements to engage supply actors.
In 2011 she was awarded the National Honour of MFR by the Federal Government of Nigeria in recognition of her contributions to the promotion and defense of women’s rights. She has served on the Council of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission; as Deputy Secretary of the Northern States Governors’ Forum Committee on Reconciliation; Healing & Security, an intervention on the crisis in North East Nigeria. At the international level, she has served as Nigeria’s Advisor for the United Nations CEDAW Committee. She is also a founding member of the citizen driven Bring Back Our Girls campaign advocating the rescue and return of Nigeria’s 219 Chibok Girls. She is currently a Special Adviser on Development to Lt. Gen. T.Y. Danjuma (Rtd), GCON; and the Chairman of the Nigeria Victims Support Fund (VSF).