+Comparing Female and Male Leaders
The Supreme Court of Nigeria has delivered a judgment granting financial autonomy to Nigeria’s 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs).
The local government is the only tier in Nigeria’s 3-tier government that has female executive Chairs, and this development could improve their performance as they have more discretion on financial matters.
However, as governance at the local governments assumes more financial significance, women may face stiffer competition emerging as executive heads of local government councils, as they do with state and federal executive positions of a governor and president respectively.
The highest political positions women have attained across the three levels of government in Nigeria are speaker of the House of Representatives in the legislative arm and minister in the executive.
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At the state level, the highest position women ever held is the post of the state deputy governor and speaker of the House of Assembly.
For the Local government level, women have been elected as chairman to head the local government unit.
Out of Nigeria’s 774 local government areas, there are only 27 female local government chairpersons across the 27 states with accessible records.
In these states, Benue leads with 9 female local government chairpersons out of 23, making it the state with the highest number of women in this role.
Additionally, Lagos has only 5 female chairpersons among its 37 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs). Ogun and Ondo states each have 2 female chairpersons. Other states have either one or no female local government chairpersons.
Comparing Female and Male Leaders
The new local government autonomy will likely improve the efficiency of women in governance than their male counterparts.
For instance, in Nigeria, female politicians like Kofoworola Ademola, Margaret Ekpo, Hajia Gambo Sawaba, Funmilayo Ransome Anikulapo-Kuti, Obiageli Ezekwesili, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi demonstrated good leadership while in power.