Women Account For Just 9.7% Of Nigeria’s 2027 Election Candidates, UN Women Raises Concern.
The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) has raised concerns over the low representation of women among candidates for Nigeria’s 2027 general elections, revealing that female candidates account for only 9.7 per cent of the total.
The organisation, in a statement issued in Abuja on Wednesday, launched the #VoteHer2027 campaign, urging Nigerians to assess candidates based on competence, integrity, experience and policy proposals rather than gender when voting in the forthcoming elections.
UN Women warned that Nigeria risked deepening its gender imbalance in governance if voters allowed prejudice against women to influence their choices at the polls.
It said the 9.7 per cent representation of women among candidates underscored the scale of women’s exclusion from the country’s political process, despite accounting for nearly half of Nigeria’s population. It noted that even if every female candidate emerged victorious in the elections, women’s representation would still remain significantly below equal participation in elected offices. The organisation said women should neither be elected merely because they were women nor denied electoral support because of their gender. It maintained that women’s participation in governance was fundamentally an issue of fairness, equal rights and social justice, stressing that decisions taken by elected representatives affected both men and women.
MSEApp News is publishing an original rewrite of this tip for readers, based on reporting associated with Arise News.