…as the National Assembly convenes today, Tuesday, 27th January, 2026, lawmakers must confront a stark reality: the window for the passage of this bill is thin. If it is to take effect in the 2027 general election cycle, it can no longer be treated as just another item on the legislative agenda. It must be treated with the “fierce urgency of now” that Martin Luther King Jr once spoke of. To delay further is to effectively deny. If HB1349 remains trapped in the purgatory of “pending business”, we are essentially signing a warrant for another four years of legislative invisibility for women.
In her book, Love Does Not Win Elections, Aisha Osori, a woman who attempted to run for a seat in the House of Representatives, makes a simple argument about Nigerian politics that unsettles polite assumptions. Politics, she shows, does not reward goodwill. It does not yield to competence alone. It is not softened by moral authority or civic virtue. It is a hard system, driven by structures, incentives, gatekeepers, and rules that determine who gets in long before a ballot is cast.
|
|
Women, Osori argues, are not excluded because they lack ambition or capacity. They are excluded because the system is designed to keep them out. Women are encouraged to “participate”, but are locked out of party structures. Women are praised as voters, mobilisers, and moral anchors, but are denied access to delegate systems and nomination processes. We are celebrated in rhetoric, but sidelined in reality.
That is why HB1349, the Reserved Seats for Women Bill exists. Not as a favour, not as charity, but as a correction to years of systemic exclusion.
|
|
|
|---|
If elections rewarded fairness organically, the bill would be unnecessary. If merit alone determined outcomes, women would already be present in proportion to our national population, our education levels, and our civic engagement. But elections do not self-correct. Systems rarely do. They reproduce themselves, unless they are intentionally redesigned.
In the Eighth National Assembly, Senator Biodun Olujimi sponsored the Gender and Equal Opportunities Bill, an ambitious attempt to align Nigerian law with global commitments such as CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) and to prohibit discrimination against women across political, economic, and social life. It was not a reserved seats bill. Still, it was broader and more legalistic. It sought equality in principle, affirmative action in theory, and justice through legislation.
Right now, the Bill is awaiting its Third Reading. It has been for months. After undergoing the scrutiny of public hearings across the six geopolitical zones, where it received widespread support, alongside all the other constitutional amendments, it was expected that this Bill would scale the National Assembly last year. Yet, almost four weeks into the new year, it still has not been passed.
Yet, it failed. Not quietly, but publicly. In March 2016, the bill could not even scale a second reading. A member of her own party challenged it on traditional and religious grounds, arguing that equality itself was culturally incompatible. The bill was sent back, and like many gender reform efforts before it, it never returned. What happened was not about the text of the law. It was about power. It was the system rejecting a reform that relied on persuasion rather than leverage.
Between 2019 and 2023, the Ninth National Assembly tried again, this time differently. Instead of asking the system to be kinder, advocates proposed changing the rules. A constitutional amendment bill, HB1301, sought to create additional, special seats for women in federal and state legislatures. This was the first formal introduction of the reserved seats mechanism in Nigeria’s parliamentary history.
It, too, failed. Despite advocacy, despite public pressure, despite the logic of representation, the proposal was rejected during the constitution review process. Once again, the system defended itself.
And then came the 10th National Assembly. This time, the politics changed. The Reserved Seats for Women Bill was reintroduced, most prominently as HB1349, and unlike its predecessors, it arrived with something previous efforts lacked: elite alignment. The bill was introduced by the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu, and over the past year-and-a-half, through our advocacy efforts at the TOS Foundation Africa and the Reserved Seats for Women Bill Campaign Coalition, it has attracted endorsements from the Head of State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu; the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, the Senate President, and the Speaker of the House.
Right now, the Bill is awaiting its Third Reading. It has been for months. After undergoing the scrutiny of public hearings across the six geopolitical zones, where it received widespread support, alongside all the other constitutional amendments, it was expected that this Bill would scale the National Assembly last year. Yet, almost four weeks into the new year, it still has not been passed.
Some may ask: Why the urgency?
The 10th National Assembly has a choice. It can be the Assembly that finally breaks the cycle of exclusion, or it can be the one that added yet another chapter to the history of broken promises. The President has signaled his support; the leadership of the National Assembly have laid the groundwork; the public has voiced its approval in every geopolitical zone.
Because electoral calendars do not wait for moral clarity. INEC’s timetable for the 2027 elections begins in 2026. Primaries, delegate selection, party processes, all the machinery that Osori documents so clearly in her book, will soon grind into motion. Without constitutional reform before that window, women will once again be told to “wait”, to “build capacity”, and to “try again next cycle.” History has shown us, time and again, that waiting to do the right thing at the right time rarely works. Women have waited through assemblies, through promises, and through applause, yet their numbers in the national and state assemblies have barely moved and, in some cases, it has regressed through the decades. In the past, each National Assembly has reset the same excuses — and with those excuses have come politeness, not representation.
This is why, as the National Assembly convenes today, Tuesday, 27th January, 2026, lawmakers must confront a stark reality: the window for the passage of this bill is thin. If it is to take effect in the 2027 general election cycle, it can no longer be treated as just another item on the legislative agenda. It must be treated with the “fierce urgency of now” that Martin Luther King Jr once spoke of. To delay further is to effectively deny. If HB1349 remains trapped in the purgatory of “pending business”, we are essentially signing a warrant for another four years of legislative invisibility for women.
The 10th National Assembly has a choice. It can be the Assembly that finally breaks the cycle of exclusion, or it can be the one that added yet another chapter to the history of broken promises. The President has signaled his support; the leadership of the National Assembly have laid the groundwork; the public has voiced its approval in every geopolitical zone.
The question is no longer “Why?” or “How?” The only question remaining is “When?”
The clock is ticking. The 2027 cycle is already casting its shadow. It is time to move from the politics of “someday” to the justice of “now.”
Osasu Igbinedion Ogwuche is the Founder of TOS Foundation Africa and Convener of the Reserved Seats for Women Bill Campaign Coalition.
