The wonder women of Africa

Hafsat Abiola: vision of democracy
When Hafsat Abiola was 19, her father, Chief Moshood Abiola, was elected president of Nigeria. But just days after the election, the outgoing military junta declared the results void, and within a year they'd thrown Chief Abiola in prison.

Hafsat's mother, Kudirat Abiola, who was already an outspoken political and business figure in her own right, campaigned tirelessly to have her husband freed and democracy restored — until she was brutally murdered by the junta in 1996. Chief Abiola died in prison two years later.

Hafsat and her four brothers and two sisters were forced into exile in the U.S., where she was already a university student. While she finished her degree, she also worked as a volunteer for the Nigerian prodemocracy movement and demonstrated outside the White House against American oil companies, whose revenue payments to Nigeria were the military leaders' main incentive to remain in power.

I wanted to send out a defiant message to the military, saying: 'You can kill the woman, but not her dream of a free, democratic Nigeria,'" says Hafsat.

From dictatorships to democracy
Nigeria was one of 20 African countries to have been ruled by military dictatorships since most of the continent gained independence in the 1960s. Chief Abiola's short-lived victory had been in the country's first-ever election. It wasn't until a new military leader took over in 1998 that another round of elections was held, and that time honoured. Hafsat, then 25, came home with a vision.

"I realized that to truly honour my mother's dream I had to provide a bridge that would enable women to cross from being society's silenced to being its vital voice for change," she explains. "I set up the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) in memory of my mother to give Nigerian women the leadership skills necessary to run for political office."

Women, she says, ensure that politics stay relevant. "Women bring to the table issues that concern families, like health care and education."

Ensuring the female voice is heard
The abysmally low status of women throughout Nigeria is one of many challenges. Forty per cent of women are illiterate, and few retain salaried jobs. Girls are expected to marry young, and Christian and Islamic leaders alike preach that women should be subservient to their husbands and fathers.

But today, in a classroom on a dusty university campus outside Lagos, 50 young women listen attentively to a speaker. The five-day seminar is part of KIND's Kudra Young Women Leadership Programme and includes workshops in leadership skills, business ideals and sexual health care.

Funimola Akinnouga, a self-assured 21-year-old studying for a degree in finance, says, "At secondary school, my classmates told me I couldn't run for class captain because it was a male job. That experience made me want to succeed as a woman even more. This course is the first time I have been made aware that I have the potential to do that."

Campaigning for female representation in government
KIND's Thirty by Eleven Campaign was established in 2006 and received money from CIDA under its Gender Equality Support pilot project. The campaign aims to help women win 30 per cent of political and decision-making positions in the 2011 elections. Currently, they hold only six per cent. "This is what we urgently need to change," says Hafsat. "We aim to make young women feel they have a right to a voice."

Princess Rotimi Beyioku — an apt name for a woman who exudes such a sense of power — is one of the 3,000 women who have so far been supported by KIND. She cuts a colourful figure as she walks through a bustling market in a suburb of Lagos, handing out flyers (printed with financial support from KIND), promoting herself as a chairmanship aspirant in the next local election. Stallholders selling everything from tomatoes to bike parts turn their heads. Women in politics are still an unusual sight in Nigeria.

"I want to change the way my community is," says Princess. "I am tired of politicians making empty promises. Our country is rich, yet the people are still poor. KIND has made me realize that I am the person in my community with the power to bring about this change."

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