Two Rooms, One Nigeria: What the Bench Already Knows That the Senate Won’t Admit

Nigeria has produced a remarkable contradiction in 2026. In one part of the country’s public life, women are occupying some of the most influential positions in the legal profession. Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun leads the Supreme Court as Chief Justice of Nigeria. Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem heads the Court of Appeal. Dr Olugbemisola Titilayomi Odusote is Director-General of the Nigerian Law School. And in July, Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya won election as President of the Nigerian Bar Association after polling 12,317 of the 26,106 votes cast. Together, these developments marked an extraordinary concentration of female leadership across Nigeria’s legal institutions.

These achievements matter because they demonstrate something Nigeria has too often treated as a question: women are capable of leading its most important institutions. The more difficult question is why that evidence has not translated into political representation. The Inter-Parliamentary Union’s June 2026 data place Nigeria 177th in the world for women’s representation in national parliaments. Its figures record women holding 15 of 356 seats in the House of Representatives (4.2%) and four of 107 seats in the Senate (3.7%).

The contrast is difficult to ignore. Women have demonstrated that they can rise through professional institutions, compete for leadership and administer complex systems. Yet the political structures through which Nigerians choose legislators continue to produce one of the world’s lowest levels of female parliamentary representation. This is not evidence that women cannot lead. It is evidence that access to different rooms in Nigerian public life is governed by very different rules.

 

The Political Door is Harder to open

Nigeria’s electoral history illustrates the problem. In January 2011, Sarah Jibril contested the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential primary against Goodluck Jonathan and Atiku Abubakar. Jonathan won with 2,736 votes, Atiku received 805, and Jibril received one vote. The result became a powerful symbol of how difficult it can be forwomen to translate political ambition into party-level support.

The episode also points to an important distinction: many women who aspire to political leadership must first survive political party structures in which access to delegates, money, nominations and party support can determine a candidacy before thewider electorate ever gets the opportunity to consider it.

The 2023 presidential election offers another revealing picture. It is sometimes incorrectly stated that no woman appeared on the presidential ballot that year.INEC’s own briefing records 18 presidential candidates, including one woman, Princess Chichi Ojei of the Allied Peoples Movement. She was the sole female presidential candidate among the 18.

That correction actually strengthens the argument. The problem is not that women are entirely absent from Nigerian politics. They are present, but in extremely small numbers

 

Representation Is Not Only About Competence

The difference between Nigeria’s legal institutions and its political institutions deserves closer attention. Justice Kekere-Ekun’s official Supreme Court profile records a career that progressed through decades of judicial service before she became Chief Justice of Nigeria. The Nigerian Law School identifies Dr Odusote as its Director-General, while the Nigerian Bar Association’s election records show BadejoOkusanya emerging from a competitive national contest.

None of these achievements suggests that leadership positions should be awarded to women simply because they are women. Rather, they demonstrate what becomes possible when institutions provide pathways through which experience, professional standing, performance and votes can determine advancement. Politics presents a different set of barriers. Campaigning and party nominations can be expensive. INEC’s regulations expressly prohibit political parties from creating conditions or setting expression-of-interest or nomination fees that could exclude aspirants on the basis of sex, among other grounds. Yet the persistence of high political costs means that the formal right to contest does not necessarily translate into an equal opportunity to compete.

The problem, therefore, is larger than whether a woman is qualified. A qualified woman must first be able to enter the competition.

 

This is where Nigeria’s proposed Women’s Special Seats Bill becomes important. The proposal seeks to create additional legislative seats reserved for women as a temporary affirmative-action measure. Under the Electoral College model discussed in July 2026, the proposal covers 12 additional Senate seats, 37 House of Representatives seats and 108 State House of Assembly seats,with a 16-year sunset clause.

The bill is not a substitute for women contesting ordinary legislative seats. Its purpose is to create an additional pathway into political representationwhile Nigeria confronts a persistent gender imbalance.

The proposal has generated substantial debate, particularly over how an Electoral College would select the women who occupy the additional seats. That question is not a technical footnote. It goes to the heart of whether the reform would genuinely widen access or simply move political gatekeeping into a different room.

A mechanism created to expand women’s representation could fail if the body responsible for choosing the representatives is itself vulnerable to political capture. The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development has therefore called for strong legal safeguards to protect the Electoral College from political manipulation and to ensure that women selected through the mechanism remain accountable to Nigerians.

That safeguard should not be treated as a technical detail. It is central to whether the reform will actually work.

 

The Lesson from Elsewhere

Nigeria does not have to invent every solution from scratch. South Africa offers one useful example of how political parties themselves can accelerate women’s representation. Before the country’s first democratic election in 1994, the African National Congress adopted a voluntary quota that required at least 30% of its party-list candidates to be women. The quota was later raised to 50%, and the policy helped transform women’s representation in Parliament.

The lesson is not that Nigeria should copy South Africa mechanically. Nigeria’s electoral system, political parties and constitutional arrangements are different. The lesson is simpler: political institutions can change their own rules when there is sufficient political will. Nigerian political parties do not have to wait for constitutional amendments before making their candidate-selection processes more inclusive.

 

The Real Test is Implementation

Passing a bill will not automatically solve Nigeria’s representation problem. If the Electoral College is politically controlled, the system could reproduce the very exclusion it was designed to correct. If parties continue to make political participation prohibitively expensive, women may still struggle to enter ordinary electoral contests.If state-level lawmakers refuse to support constitutional reform, the process can stall.

The constitutional process also means that reform cannot be treated as an Abuja-only conversation. Statelevel political actors and citizens will have an important role in determining whether any constitutional alteration ultimately succeeds.

This is where citizens have a role. Women’s representation should not be treated as a women’s issue alone. It is a democratic issue. Citizens can ask their representatives where they stand on the Special Seats proposal. Civil society organisations can monitor the legislative process. Political parties can reduce barriers to women’s participation. Media organisations can examine not only how many women contest elections, but alsowhat happens to them during screening, primaries and candidate selection.

And women themselves must continue to build the networks, resources and political coalitions necessary to compete. The objective should not be to create a system in which women are given power without scrutiny. It should be to create a system inwhich gender is no longer an unnecessary barrier to entering the competition.

 

Nigeria Has Already Seen the Evidence

The rise of four women to the top of Nigeria’s legal institutions in the same period is more than a historic coincidence. It is evidence. It demonstrates that women can occupy positions requiring expertise, institutional authority, public confidence and responsibility at the highest level. The political system should not require women to prove the same proposition repeatedly.

Nigeria already knows that women can lead. The unresolved question is whether the country is prepared to build political institutions that allow that leadership to compete fairly for public office.

The Supreme Court has shown one pathway: professional progression, institutional experience and merit can open the door. The National Assembly now has an opportunity to examine another: whether constitutional reform can make the political door wider without replacing accountability with patronage.

Nigeria has already answered the question of whether women can lead. The next question is whether Nigeria is willing to let more of them compete.