Lawan: We could not pass gender bills | I feel so bad about it

Senate President Ahmad Lawan says he felt bad that the gender bills were not passed by the national assembly under his watch. 

Lawan spoke on Friday during a visit to President Muhammadu Buhari on the occasion of the Eid-el-Fitr festival in Abuja.

He expressed dissatisfaction that members of the national assembly did not vote in favour of at least one of the gender bills before the end of the administration.

The lawmakers rejected five gender bills seeking to promote women’s inclusion in governance, and decision-making, among others in March 2022.

Lawan said he was confident that more sensitisation would go a long way in getting the bills passed.

“First of all, when the bills, five of them that concern women were not voted for by the national assembly, I think naturally, there are things that we assume could happen. But they didn’t happen the way we wanted them. But remember that even bills that concern the national assembly were killed,” he said.

“There are bills that concern the national assembly itself that did not see the light of the day. I felt bad that we could not pass even one. But then we shouldn’t really lose hope, we should continue to campaign, and we should talk to more members of the national assembly. And we should also re-strategize.

“Maybe the kind of campaign that was undertaken may not be necessarily the one that will give you the kind of outcome that we needed. But I’m very confident that we should continue to campaign for issues that we have not been able to get right.

“Let me give you an example. The mayor of FCT, almost every constitutional amendment period, the mayor of FCT will surface. But it has not been passed. Does that mean that we shouldn’t continue to ask for a mayor for FCT from those that feel there should be a mayor? No!

“And there are issues that concerned the national assembly itself that were not really passed. So I felt bad that we couldn’t pass any of them. But I’m also very optimistic that if we re-strategize, look at the way we campaign we could get either all of them or some of them passed in the next assembly by the grace of God.”

He further said he had no regret over any of his actions as the Senate President, adding that there were some actions he could not satisfactorily attend to.

“No no, no, you can’t say regrets. We can only say there are things that we have not been able to satisfactorily deal with. And this is natural because we don’t have sufficient funds,” he added.

“Two, as human beings, there are areas that naturally, whatever you do, you may not get it right. But it’s for us to identify those areas, go back and rework them and this administration as it winds up, an APC administration is coming in to take over and by the grace of God, we will have a national assembly that is also APC.

“So, we will continue to work on those areas that we need to improve. So, I am not going to talk about what areas because the time we have here is very limited.”

Meanwhile, the lawmakers rejected a bill seeking to create additional seats for women to increase gender representation in the national assembly.

The bill to grant citizenship to foreign-born husbands of Nigerian women, the bill to ensure affirmative action of at least 35 percent in political party administration and appointive positions across federal and state levels, and the bill to provide a minimum of 20% of ministerial or commissioner nominees for women.

Also rejected was the bill to allow a woman to become an indigene of her husband’s state after five years of marriage.