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THE FEMALE FACTOR
Chris Ngwodo
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 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.
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Posted by Robot| 28.10.2006 07:52