Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan Laments Ordeals Of Women Seeking Elective Offices in Nigeria
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The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for Kogi Central Senatorial District, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan has decried the attacks women who aspire to run for elections in Nigeria face.
Regretting the dearth of women in political positions in Kogi State, the aspiring lawmaker said that most people in Nigeria are not comfortable trusting a woman to hold a position of authority blaming it on culture, societal expectation, among other things.
“In Nigeria today and not just Kogi State, most people find it difficult to trust a woman occupying a position of authority because they feel by nature or what they grew observing in the society, their mothers are always relegated to the back and that has shaped the minds of people and maybe the governor himself who assume that a woman at best should be a house wife or just take the back seat in support.
“So the cultural effect is real, the society expectation is real then we talk about financial implication of contesting as a woman is real. We leave in a man’s world as they say even though I see a number of feminists springing up to push for decent space for women to be recognised,” Akpoti-Uduaghan said on Channels Television Political Paradigm.
She berated the governor of Kogi State Yahaya Bello for only playing to the gallery to score positive political points for his presidential ambition when he said all deputy chairmen of local government areas would be women.
Wondering why a woman can’t be the chairman instead, Akpoti-Uduaghan said even no member of the state assembly is a woman, no House of Representative member or Senator is a woman and all that she said, is caused by the policies put forward by the governor.
It is not the first time the legal practitioner, Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan would be aiming for the red chamber as she had contested under the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 2019 and eventually lost to the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC). She also challenged Governor Yahaya Bello in the gubernatorial election in the same year and lost out.
She however said that she is very confident of getting elected as a Senator this time around because of her belief in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) promised to deploy in the 2023 elections.
It is believed that her emergence as the PDP candidate in Kogi Central Senatorial District would be an added advantage in her quest to represent the people of the senatorial district at the red chamber.
