The Labour Party (LP) also won six Senate seats and 34 House of Representatives seats. To top it off, its gubernatorial candidate, Alex Otti, became governor of Abia State. The party鈥檚 successes are generally attributed to the Obidient movement, an online movement named after Peter Obi, who was essentially a sensation during the elections. 

And so, like magic, in a matter of months, the “” movement, fueled by young, loud, and eager, and patriotic Nigerians, converted an online movement into electoral results. But it did not last.

Presently, in March 2026, LP holds, fewer than 13 House of Representatives seats, and one governor. Obi, the 2023 presidential candidate, through whom it gained momentum, defected to another party on New Year’s Eve 2025. Its national chairman is fighting a court-sanctioned removal, and the movement that powered its rise has now publicly from the party’s leadership.

What could鈥檝e possibly gone wrong? 

There is Fire on The Mountain

To understand LP’s collapse, you have to understand the state it was in post the 2023 elections, specifically on an organisational level. 

The Labour Party had no serious ward-level organisations, no sustained membership drives, and no grassroots fundraising infrastructure. Local remained weak or effectively inactive after the 2023 elections. A clear example of this was the party’s failure to provide agents for over 50,000 polling units during the vote. happened because they didn’t have organised ward chapters to . Meanwhile, the APC and PDP have permanent offices and “ward chairmen“ in almost every corner of the country. While the APC and PDP kept their local branches active and held regular drives to sign up new members, the Labour Party stayed focused on top-level politics. 

In 2023, Julius Abure and Lamidi Apapa both claimed to be the rightful National Chairman, leading to conflicting court orders for months. Again in early 2026, the party was divided between a group led by  Abure and a caretaker committee led by Nenadi Usman, the current interim chairman of the Labour Party.  These suggest that the party had no clear internal chain of command capable of resolving disputes or enforcing discipline, which meant that when the disagreements came, as they inevitably do in Nigerian politics, there was no system to contain them. 

This is a familiar story in Nigerian opposition politics. The Labour Party is falling into the same ‘opposition trap’ that destroyed the party in 2006鈥攖he party was embroiled in a leadership tussle between Mojisola Akinfenwa and Adebisi Akande鈥攁nd the in 1999 as well.

How to Set Your Own House on Fire

The story of LP’s collapse is incomplete without  Julius Abure, the party’s national chairman, or at least, the man who still insists he is its national chairman despite a Supreme Court ruling that says otherwise.

If LP’s structural weakness was a slow-moving disaster,  Abure’s factional war was the booster. After the ruled against his continued tenure as national chairman in 2025, Abure refused to accept the outcome. His faction proceeded to issue the of key party figures like Alex Otti and Ireti Kingibe and made public threats to the party’s management of 2023 campaign funds.

As recently as  January 2026, Abure himself insisted that a claim that would carry more weight if his faction were not one of the primary reasons the party can no longer make that claim with a straight face.

While the leadership crisis did not create LP’s structural failures, it made them impossible to ignore. The absence of members in most wards was documented during the 2023 campaign, months before the big fights between Abure and Apapa started, but every week the Abure story dominated headlines; it was a week the party could not talk about policy, comment on Tinubu鈥檚 governance, or strategise for 2027. 

Where Are You Going?

Between 2024 and early 2026, LP lost all six of its senators and at least 21 of its 34 House members to defections 鈥� mostly to the APC, and a little to the PDP. It in July 2024, when Senator Francis Ezenwa Onyewuchi of Imo East quietly crossed the aisle to the APC. Five months later,Chinedu Okere of Imo, Mathew Donatus of Kaduna, and four others all headed for the APC. By 2025, Senator Ireti Kingibe of the FCT left to join the African Democratic Congress (ADC), and Senator Neda Imasuen of Edo South left for the APC. Enugu’s Dennis Agbo, Chidi Obetta, and Sunday Umeha decamped to the PDP and the APC, respectively.six senators in, zero senators out, a complete wipeout in under three years.

The Labour Party has responded to these defections, and it鈥檚 been outraged. It labelled the defectors who had given “no support” to the party. It didn鈥檛 stop there; LP  published a register of those who had left. One might say that the outrage, though unflattering, was understandable. 

If you’re wondering how these people were able to defect so seamlessly, the answer lies in of the 1999 Constitution, which provides that lawmakers may defect without necessarily losing their seats when a formally confirmed merger or split within their party occurs. LP had neither, yet its members walked away freely, retaining their salaries and offices. 

Civic groups and legal analysts have called for amendments to mandate automatic seat forfeiture in the absence of a judicially confirmed party split, and for the Independent National Electoral Commission to play a more active monitoring role. But those reforms have not been implemented, and in the meantime, the constitutional loophole remains available to any Nigerian lawmaker who decides that their political ambition stands a better chance elsewhere.

The defection crisis is not entirely LP’s fault. But a party with stronger internal discipline, stronger constituency relationships, and a more credible threat of political consequences might have made some of those defections more costly to contemplate.

The One-Man Party

No honest analysis of LP’s collapse can be whole without Peter Obi, not because he was responsible for it, but because the party’s dependence on his personal appeal was a structural failure, and one that LP has now acknowledged in the most awkward terms possible.

In December 2025, LP spokesperson Obiora Ifoh accused Obi of never meaningfully investing in party-building and described the LP’s 2023 decision to adopt him as its presidential candidate as 鈥�” LP National Secretary Umar Farouk Ibrahim had said months earlier, in July 2025, that Critics across the political landscape had long described LP as a built only on Peter Obi鈥檚 popularity rather than any coherent ideology or organisational identity. This view was proven correct in early 2026 when Obi left the party for the ADC. Without him, the Labour Party has to show it has its own strength or a clear plan of its own.

There is an argument that Obi focused more on his personal campaign than on building the Labour Party as a lasting organisation. However, a party serious about its own future does not allow itself to become so dependent on a single personality that the personality’s exit becomes an existential event. LP did exactly that.

On December 31, 2025, Obi formalised what had been an open secret for months; he decamped to the ADC at a rally in Enugu. Flanked by David Mark and Aminu Tambuwal, his defection was called a against APC governance. By March 2026, he had in Anambra and was already building coalition conversations for 2027. LP called his departure a “relief.” Its spokesperson said Obi that had once animated the party.

A party and its most prominent figure spent three years failing to build anything together. In a July 2025 interview with News Central, Ikechukwu Amaechi, the publisher of TheNiche Newspapers, described the as ‘unnecessary’ for a group that had performed well in the 2023 elections. And unnecessary is what it was.

Last Man Standing

In Abia State, Alex Otti has spent the same period governing in a way that appears to please his people. Traditional rulers have called him. He has resisted defection pressure, denied coalition rumours, and when asked about his future in the LP in early 2026, offered a careful but pointed answer:

That sentence is doing a lot of work. It is not a ringing endorsement of the party’s future. It is a person keeping his options honest while doing his job. Otti’s presence in LP is significant not because it signals the party’s health, but because it signals what LP could have been 鈥攁nd wasn’t鈥� everywhere else. His governorship is proof that LP’s 2023 project was viable. It is also, at this point, nearly the only proof that remains.

The Defection Syndrome is Spreading 

The Labour Party’s collapse did not happen in isolation., and the broader opposition landscape entering 2027 is fractured 鈥� LP gutted, PDP factionalised, Peter Obi now in his third party in three years, and the ADC elevated from obscurity to relevance almost entirely on the strength of Peter Obi鈥檚 name recognition. Reports from say that a lack of discipline and a ‘giving up’ attitude have made the opposition weak. Because they are not working together, they are struggling to challenge the ruling party before the 2027 election.

The APC has benefited the most from all the chaos but has strategically leaned into the vacuum created by it. By welcoming politicians who switch sides and using the state apparatus to enforce disputed court orders, the APC has turned the opposition’s problems into its strength. But the APC鈥檚 actions are hardly an excuse for the Labour Party. The party’s structural failures, its over-reliance on  Obi, its inability to convert the Obidient movement’s energy into lasting organisation, and its catastrophic internal implosion are LP’s own. External pressure finds the cracks that already exist and capitalises on them. LP had many.

The Obidient movement itself saw this coming. When LP attempted to launch an “Obidient鈥� Directorate” in 2024, members of the movement publicly rejected it, describing it as a their independent grassroots force. A party that could not retain the loyalty of the movement that made it relevant was a party in serious trouble, and it was in that trouble long before the defections and the departure of its most prominent member.

When the Opposition Disappears, So Does Democracy

Nigeria heads into 2027 with a ruling party that faces no coherent national opposition. That creates a glaring imbalance and is not good for democracy, regardless of one’s views on any individual party. 

The scale of this imbalance is best seen in the numbers: APC now commands a two-thirds majority in the Senate with 84 seats and controls 31 of the 36 states. In a democracy, this level of consolidation effectively grants the ruling party the power to amend the Constitution, with virtually no legislative friction.

The Labour Party had a window, a genuine window, to become that opposition. It didn’t build when it had the chance. Now it is asking voters to believe in a party with zero senators, and a chairman the Supreme Court has already ruled against.

Whether it can recover from that is, at this point, genuinely unclear. What is clear is that the failure was earned.

So鈥� What Now?

It is important to know why LP鈥檚 implosion should matter to the average Nigerian, even those who never attended an Obidient rally, never voted LP, and have long since made peace with the idea that Nigerian politics is riddled with electoral malpractices and disappointment. The answer is that a democracy without functional opposition is not a democracy in any meaningful sense. It is a coronation with extra steps, and that affects everyone, LP voter or not.

The question then becomes practical. If the two parties most positioned to provide that opposition鈥� LP through its 2023 momentum and PDP through its 16 years of federal governance鈥� have both failed to hold the line, what exactly can ordinary Nigerians do? 

The first and most foundational thing is to stay on the voters’ register and show up. Voter apathy is not neutrality; it is a gift to whoever is already in power. The Obidient movement proved in 2023 that mass civic participation can genuinely move numbers. That capacity does not disappear because the party that channeled it imploded. It just needs a new direction.

The second thing is to watch your lawmakers and make noise when they move. Knowing who your representatives are, what they voted for, when they crossed the aisle, and to whom is the infrastructure that makes defection expensive. 

Finally and most importantly, do the research before the next election. No party’s ballot position is a substitute for scrutiny. What has their party actually built at the local government level? Who is funding this candidate? These questions are not far-fetched. They are the minimum due diligence that is expected of citizens seeking government reform. 

The Labour Party may or may not recover. The PDP may or may not reorganise into something coherent, and Peter Obi may or may not find in the ADC what he could not build in LP. None of that is within the average Nigerian’s direct control. The politicians contesting in 2027 will either meet alert voters or nonchalant voters. And it鈥檚 in our best interest to be the first.

The episode, titled “Renewed Hope鈥� or 鈥淗opelessness,鈥� was aimed at putting Bwala in the hot seat over the flagship agenda of the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2027 elections.

Joining Hasan in holding the government to account was a panel of three voices: , a journalist with the Financial Times; , a lawyer and policy expert with the ; and Tunde Doherty, the chairman of the APC UK chapter.

Hasan and the panel pressed Bwala on the metrics that matter most to ordinary Nigerians: rising insecurity, deepening poverty, persistent corruption, and a government whose credibility is increasingly difficult to defend with a straight face.

One of Bwala鈥檚 astonishingly disgraceful claims was that the state of insecurity in Nigeria was not getting worse but needed context. Following the suicide bombing in Maiduguri on March 16, we can鈥檛 help but look back on Bwala鈥檚 comments and the entire interview.

The OG Anti Tinubu Guy

Before we get into the details of the interview, it is important to know who Daniel Bwala is, or rather, who he used to be.

During the buildup to the 2023 presidential elections, he served as the spokesperson for former vice president Atiku Abubakar鈥檚 presidential campaign under the People鈥檚 Democratic Party. He was one of Tinubu’s loudest critics, raising pointed questions about his fitness for office. Following Tinubu鈥檚 appearance at Chatham House in December 2022, Bwala argued that of delegating questions to his aides was an “abdication of responsibility” and compared electing him to attending a “night of a thousand laughs.”

Bwala鈥檚 criticism of Tinubu was so sharp that in late 2022, in an X  that has since been deleted, he proclaimed that  “the human brain is unique鈥� until you join APC, then it stops working.” He is now a paid employee of the APC presidency, defending that same man on international television. This, of course, naturally leaves anyone who has ever seen Bwala鈥檚 famous post wondering if his brain has been affected.

Hasan replayed Bwala’s own words back to him, and if he expected the man to take some sort of accountability, he was sorely mistaken, because Bwala did no such thing. Faced with what can be crowned the most embarrassing moment on TV, Bwala said unabashedly that he was playing opposition politics. It was his job to speak against Tinubu then, so he did it. 

Bwala’s approach throughout was not to engage with difficult facts but to contextualise them into irrelevance, a strategy that doesn鈥檛 work when the facts and lived realities of Nigerians point to a clear decline in living standards.

Daniel Thinks The Glass is Half Full. 

The security figures Hasan cited are difficult to dispute. Nigeria recorded approximately 11,000 in 2025, up from 8,700 in 2023, a 26% increase. Nigeria ranks among the five most dangerous countries in the world. Kidnapping, he noted, has become a “profit-seeking industry.”

Bwala’s response was to raise a glass of water. No, he literally raised a glass of water. 

He argued that the same glass looks half full or half empty depending on who is looking and that Western critics are simply choosing to see Nigeria’s progress as decline. According to him, the insecurity crisis is not getting worse but is being misread and requires context. Context. Everything, in Bwala’s defence rhetoric, requires context. We don鈥檛 know what Bwala鈥檚 definition of worse is, but we鈥檙e pretty certain that a 26% rise in violent deaths is not a matter of context.

He added that terrorism is a “hydra-headed” global problem, that Nigeria is conducting joint operations with the US and Turkey. What he could not adequately address was the human cost of pursuing that supposed progress. Hasan raised accounts of several civilian casualties documented by Amnesty International, which has also flagged a pattern of military impunity. Bwala insisted operations targeted terrorists, not homes and residential areas. 

To be fair, insecurity in Nigeria predates Tinubu. But “it was already bad before us” is not a defence when the numbers are constantly increasing on your watch. And insisting that they aren’t, on international television, with a straight face, is not context. It is a lie.

鈥淚 didn’t say that.鈥�

We need to talk about Daniel Bwala’s memory and how conveniently it fails him. Hasan confronted Bwala with allegations of political violence, financial criminality, and election fraud that he had made publicly before joining the Tinubu administration. He said that Tinubu had created and funded a militia, that this same camp had issued death threats against him, and that the 2023 election was so corrupt he couldn’t eat for three days after the results came in. Bwala denied all of it.

These allegations were made by the same man now being paid to tell you everything is fine.  The clips of him making these allegations exist, and they’re not hard to find. At some point, the question stops being whether Bwala is just lying and starts being whether he thinks Nigerians are too lazy to check.

Only Drunk People Think Tinubu is Corrupt

The corruption exchange was where the interview became most visibly uncomfortable for Bwala. Hasan brought up two specific and damaging points: Tinubu’s own US drug forfeiture case and his appointment of Abubakar Bagudu as Minister of Budget and Economic Planning. According to the US Department of Justice, Bagudu embezzled and from Nigeria during the Abacha regime; a case that was eventually settled for $163 million. That this man now oversees Nigeria’s economic planning is a detail that the majority of Nigerians can鈥檛 seem to wrap their heads around and one that the administration has never adequately explained.

Bwala’s defence on both counts was the same: Nigerian courts have cleared the relevant issues, and there are ongoing probes. This is a legally defensible position. It is not, however, a morally satisfying one, particularly for a government that has made anti-corruption part of its “Renewed Hope” messaging. Appointing someone with that background to a position of authority sends a specific message about what the administration considers disqualifying and apparently, a $163 million settlement is not it.

Additionally, Hasan noted that the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) named Tinubu as a finalist for its 2024 Corrupt Person of the Year award. A 2025 poll found that two out of every three Nigerians believe Tinubu and his team are corrupt. Bwala’s response to this was to dismiss it as a statement from 鈥� in his words 鈥� “those are drunken people.“

Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Crap

On the increasing poverty rate and the economy, Bwala was at his most technically competent and most politically tone-deaf mode simultaneously.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, over 120 million Nigerians currently live in multidimensional poverty 鈥� a number projected to rise to 141 million by 2026. Approximately 18 million children are out of school, according to the UN. Hasan further noted that around 20,000 schools have been shut down due to insecurity. These are not opposition statistics; these are verifiable facts.

Bwala acknowledged the “short-term pain” from the fuel subsidy removal but pointed to improved foreign reserve health, reduced net import dependency, and praise from the IMF and World Bank as evidence that reforms are working structurally. Aanu Adeoye of the Financial Times was asked directly whether the average Nigerian is doing better under Tinubu. His answer was a flat no. Ayisha Osori of the Open Society Foundations rated the security situation 1 out of 10. These are not partisan voices. These are informed, independent analysts, and neither of them bought what Bwala was selling.

Bwala’s economic argument essentially asks ordinary Nigerians to trust that the pain is temporary and the structure is sound. That is a reasonable ask if you are not one of the 120 million people currently living in poverty while waiting for the structure to 鈥渃atch up鈥�. 

Conclusion

Bwala is good at his job, in the narrow sense that he never ran out of things to say, albeit lies. The problem is that most of what he said was either false, contradicted his own prior statements, or relied on a definition of “context” that we still don’t understand to date. 

A government that is doing well rarely needs a spokesman this busy defending it. And a spokesman worth trusting rarely needs to delete his old tweets.

With 2027 approaching, these questions are not going away. The only thing that remains to be seen is whether Bwala’s next set of answers will be any more honest than these were and if we can even trust anything he says.

We want to hear about your personal experiences that reflect how politics or public systems affect daily life in Nigeria. Share your story with us 鈥攚e鈥檇 love to hear from you!

But in  Nigeria, the issues that uniquely burden women aren’t just being ignored; they’re getting worse. And we have the data to prove it.

When the Informal Sector Collapses, Women Fall First

A 2025 report by BudgIT revealed that women make up over 50% of Nigeria’s informal economy workers. The informal economy is an essential source of livelihood for many, and it provides job security for women who may not have opportunities to work in the formal sector. 

These women are the market traders buying goods in bulk and reselling them, the farmers who are transporting livestock from farms to cities, the hairdressers, tailors, and small-scale entrepreneurs who keep Nigeria’s economy moving. But these women work in low-pay, unprotected roles with zero safety nets, such as pension plans and health insurance. So, when the economy crashes, they crash with it. And under Tinubu, the economy has crashed spectacularly.

When the President removed the fuel subsidy in May 2023, petrol prices jumped from 鈧�185 per litre to over 鈧�1,000.

The government launched initiatives like the promising to reach 25 million women through a digital app for finance and market access. But implementation has been slow and largely invisible while women’s businesses collapse in real time.

Gender-Based Violence Cases Are on The Rise 

There’s a direct connection between economic collapse and violence against women. When poverty increases, Gender-Based Violence (GBV) increases with it.

In Akwa Ibom State alone, GBV cases due to the widespread economic difficulties created by the fuel subsidy removal. Women are being abused at higher rates. And they’re trapped because the same economic policies that fueled the violence have destroyed their ability to leave.

In September 2023 alone, 24,720 nationwide. From January to September 2025, there were 10,326 reported cases, affecting 30% of women aged 15-49.

 The states that femicide rates have surged 240% in early 2025 compared to the previous year.

Government spending on rose by a meagre amount from 鈧�311 per woman/girl in 2023 to 鈧�365 in 2024. That’s less than the cost of a basic meal. As of November 2025, Nigeria has across only 24 states, meaning more than a third of the country has none at all. The shelters that exist were built by NGO鈥檚 who surviving on donations and international funding, not the government. And the Minister herself has acknowledged the numbers are nowhere near enough.

The Healthcare System Is Killing Women

Nigeria has one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates. In 2023, the country accounted for over . Women are dying from preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth. This government has exacerbated the problem.

More than 4,000 women received free C-sections, and 1,000 primary health centres were revitalised during Tinubu’s first two years, with a focus on rural areas with healthcare shortages. Sounds good, right? Except the data tells a completely different story.

Market surveys conducted by The in 2025 show that medicine prices have increased by between 30 per cent and 100 per cent in just 14 months.  And here’s perhaps the most surprising stat: The family planning by 97% in 2025.

This means women have almost no access to contraception, reproductive health services, or family planning resources. In a country that already has one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates, the government decided reproductive healthcare wasn’t worth funding. It鈥檚 very telling. 

The Gender Gap in Nigeria Refuses to Close

Women make up only and 22% of engineering and tech graduates. This is a sector that contributes and represents the future of the economy, yet women are being systematically excluded.

A 2023 published by ONE Campaign and the Centre for Global Development showed that only about 30% of 93 surveyed technology companies in Nigeria are owned by women, and more than one-third of these companies employed no women at all.

As is the case with other things we have discussed, this gender work gap is caused by poverty, cultural biases, and lack of access.

This digital divide that exists in Nigeria reinforces economic inequality. Without internet access or ICT tools, girls in rural areas are left behind in a rapidly digitising world.

In a 2025 interview with Vanguard Newspapers, Ufoma Emuophedaroa, who runs a  13-year-long advocacy campaign for girls in ICT, says that early exposure of girls to tech makes all the difference. So, why isn鈥檛 the government investing in this?

“One of the most frustrating issues for campaigners is the government’s little involvement. I once approached a federal agency to assist the program, but they requested that I pay for the minister’s lodging, meals, and flights. I was shocked. Isn’t this a government priority?” She asked.

In 2019,  the was launched, and one of its implementation strategies was to ensure that the digital skills training programme incorporates women, but critics argue that implementation has been slow, especially in rural communities.

The economic collapse that destroyed women’s businesses and trapped them in violent homes is also closing off their daughters’ futures. Girls who might have studied computer science or engineering are dropping out to help at home, getting married early, or entering the same informal sector trap their mothers are stuck in.

Women鈥檚 participation in STEM in Nigeria has always been poor, and it hasn鈥檛 gotten better. In fact, under Tinubu, the gap is persistent, stubborn, and unmoving, and this can be tied directly to the economic pressures this administration has created. When you can’t afford the internet, you can’t learn to code. When you don’t have a smartphone, you can’t access online STEM resources. When your family is starving, going to school is the least of their worries. It’s an endless loop of suffering.

Tinubu, why did you lie?

Women have long been left out of Nigeria’s most important decision-making spaces, a problem that predates Tinubu and has been ongoing through administration after administration. Buhari’s eight years offered little improvement, with women consistently sidelined in appointments and policy. During his 2023 campaign, Bola Tinubu made a in his Renewed Hope manifesto. He promised that 35% of all senior government positions would go to women. The APC women’s leader, Betta Edu, promised women they’d finally get “the right seat at the table.”

Two years later, women are still waiting outside the door. Out of 48 ministers in Tinubu’s cabinet, . That’s 16.7% and nowhere close to 35%. Despite multiple cabinet reshuffles, that number hasn’t budged. 

When women are shut out of decision-making spaces, the issues that specifically and disproportionately affect them鈥搈aternal mortality, sexual violence, and menstrual health鈥� fall off the agenda completely.

And if you needed more proof of how little this country values women’s voices, here’s what just happened in March 2026.

Kogi Central Senator,  Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, was invited by the Ministry of Women Affairs to represent Nigeria at the 70th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70), held March 9-19, 2026, in New York. 

A March 5 letter confirmed Senate sponsorship for Akpoti-Uduaghan and Senator Adeniyi Adegbonmire (Ondo Central).

But the Nigerian Senate removed Akpoti-Uduaghan from the delegation, leaving just Adegbonmire, who is a male senator, to be in attendance at the conference. The Senate swears the omission was not malicious and was a result of 鈥渓ate submission鈥� of documents, but Akpoti-Uduaghan has countered this.

This incident is not only suspicious, but it also mirrors the normalised disregard for female representation in the country. For context, Nigeria’s National Assembly has approximately 5% female representation鈥攖he lowest in Africa according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. There are only four women in the 109-member Senate, down from eight in the previous assembly.

When you have 5% women in your legislature, when you promise 35% and deliver 17% in the cabinet, when you remove female senators from women’s rights conferences, you’re not just breaking promises, you鈥檙e denying their importance.

The denial doesn’t stop at representation; it also affects their funding. The Ministry of Women Affairs, the government body responsible for advancing women’s issues, received approximately 0.05% of the 鈧�28 trillion 2024 budget. That鈥檚 roughly 鈧�6.5 billion out of 鈧�28 trillion. For a ministry charged with addressing maternal mortality, GBV, economic exclusion, healthcare access, and every other issue we’ve discussed in this article, that amount hardly scratches the surface.

To top it off, Tinubu has continued to pay lip service to important legislation that could actually change things for women. , which would create 219 additional seats exclusively for women, has been stuck in committee since July 2024. , which would guarantee 35% affirmative action in appointments, has been stalled for years by “cultural concerns.” The promises are stacking up, and nothing gets passed.

You can’t fix what you can’t see. And when women aren’t in the room, their bodies, their safety, and their specific needs become invisible.

What鈥檚 the Way Forward?

In  Nigeria, women鈥檚 businesses are being taken from them through policies that ignore how they actually work and earn. The rising cost of healthcare and cuts in reproductive health budgets undermine their health.  Women鈥檚 voices are being taken away by systematic exclusion from political power. So what then should they celebrate??

The International Women’s Day theme demands three things: Rights. Justice. Action.

Here鈥檚 what each of these currently looks like  

Rights: Women’s rights in Nigeria are not protected 鈥� they are negotiated, defunded, and discarded whenever they become inconvenient.

Justice: There is no justice in a system that knows the problem, names the problem, and then does nothing. Knowing is not accountability. Naming is not changing.

Action: The only action this government has mastered is the art of the announcement 鈥� bold promises, quiet reversals, and silence where policy should be.

Here’s what actual rights, justice, and action SHOULD look like:

• Real economic safety nets that acknowledge the 92% of women working in the informal sector. Low-interest loans and business recovery grants that help women rebuild what fuel prices destroyed. When women’s businesses thrive, the entire economy improves. Their success is Nigeria’s success.
• Comprehensive GBV response that goes beyond 鈧�365 per woman. Legal aid that’s accessible. Prosecutors who take cases seriously and courts that convict abusers. Laws that protect women, not just on paper but in practice. Because right now, women are being killed at record rates, and the government is spending less and less on their protection.
• Healthcare that women can actually access; it is not enough to preach and provide policies; the women for whom they鈥檙e created must be able to access them. Family planning budget should be restored, not slashed
• Funding scholarships for women in STEM, and the cultural biases that lock women out of careers in STEM.
• Political representation that actually reflects progress, actualisation of the reserved seats legislation, and adequate funding for the Women’s Affairs Ministry. 

This women’s month, Nigerian women don’t need performative celebrations or presidential goodwill messages. They need their rights protected. They need justice when those rights are violated, and they need action that actually improves their lives.

Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls is a demand. And it’s HIGH time this government started delivering.

We want to hear about your personal experiences that reflect how politics or public systems affect daily life in Nigeria. Share your story with us 鈥攚e鈥檇 love to hear from you! 

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