After the Supreme Court of Nigeria delivered a judgement granting financial autonomy to the 774 Local Government Areas in July 2024, state governments scrambled to organise local government elections in their states to access federal allocations. In this electioneering process, both men and women have been actively involved in vying for the chairmanship positions across different local government areas in Nigeria.
The involvement of men and women in grassroots representation aims to represent the interests of people at the grassroots level. However, the aftermath of the election shows that only a few women occupy these positions according to the results.
In the 2024 Local Government elections, 29 states with 618 Local Governments participated. Of this number, only 23 women emerged as local government chairpersons while 595 men emerged as chairmen. This gives a ratio of 3.7% of women to 96.3% of men emerged in the 2024 local government elections.
The state with the highest number of female local government chairpersons is Benue State. Benue leads with 9 female local government chairpersons out of 23, making it the state with the highest number of women in this role.
Kafilat Taiwo is a Data Journalist & Research executive at Dataphyte with a background in mass communication. She uses research and data to tell stories around Health, Accountability, Gender, Solutions journalism and Investigative reporting to influence change and development.