As the world celebrates this year’s International Women’s Day, a United Nations-trained Negotiator and Chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Comrade Edwin Uhara has called on leaders in all stratas of influence to walk the talk on equal rights and justice for women and girls irrespective of class and status.
This was made known in a goodwill message sent to newsmen in Enugu on Sunday to mark the United Nations special day.
Uhara noted that though some progress have been made 31 years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action which was an all-encompassing global policy framework for gender equality and women’s empowerment but also added that more efforts should be made because only two women have been democratically elected as Presidents in Africa with the first being Ellen Johnson Sirleaf who served as President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018 and the second being Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah who was sworn-in as President of Namibia on March 21, 2025.
Others who became Presidents after the death or resignation of their predecessors are;
Samia Suluhu Hassan who assumed office in 2021 as President of Tanzania following the death of her predecessor, late John Magufuli.
Sahle-Work Zewde who was appointed to serve as the first female president of Ethiopia from 2018 to 2024 following the resignation of her predecessor, Mulatu Teshome.
Joyce Banda who served as president of Malawi from 2012 to 2014 following the death of her boss, late President Bingu Wa Mutharika.
And Ameenah Gurib-Fakim who was appointed to serve as president of Mauritius from 2015 to 2018 when her predecessor, Kailash Purryag resigned from office.
Like my professional colleague and renowned rights activist, Gloria Steinem once said, “The story of women’s struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights”
This was the intellectual idea that shaped my worldview in 2013 when I started championing the cause for gender equality as then National President of Young Nigerians for Change with many publications in Nigeria, United Kingdom and other countries.
In 2015 and 2019, I was part of the team that tirelessly worked to make late Senator Aisha Jummai Alhassan the first democratically elected female governor in Nigeria.
In 2016, I mobilized many African news organizations to support the first female Prime Minister of New Zealand and Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, (UNDP) Rt. Hon. Helen Elizabeth Clark to become the first female United Nations Secretary-General.
Though we did not succeed because the former Prime Minister of Portugal, Antonio Guterres emerged as United Nations Secretary-General but the then Nigerian Minister of Environment, Amina J. Muhammed was appointed as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations.
And as Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”
Now is the time for leaders to walk the talk on equal rights and justice for all; not only on the political fronts but in all frontiers because according to the United Nations statistics, ‘women have only 64 per cent of the legal rights that men hold worldwide in fundamental areas of life, including work, money, safety, family, property, mobility, business and retirement.”
With the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day #IWD2026 being “Rights, Justice and Action for all Women and Girls”, there is an urgent need for action to dismantle all barriers to equal justice, discriminatory laws, weak legal protections and harmful practices and social norms that erode the rights of women and girls in our societies.
Also, based on the adjusted electoral timetable for political activities as recently released by the nation’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission which indicated that primary elections for all political parties in the country will be starting by April 23rd and will end by May 30th, I call on the the leadership of the various political parties to allocate certain elective positions of their parties to women because the political destiny of many politicians in Africa is in still the hands of strongmen and not strong institutions.
Signed:
Comrade Edwin Uhara,
United Nations-trained Negotiator and former member of the APC Presidential Campaign Council
𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁𝘀𝗔𝗽𝗽 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗧𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗔𝘀 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽!
