As invasive as the social media platforms, so also is it the case that they also do come along with great reminders. This book cover is one of such. It is a picture that will bring joy as well as sadness to a good number of readers of Intervention.
That is simply because Women in Nigeria (WIN) was like no other activist platform in the 1980s. It was not just an all-comer front in gender terms (it was open to both female and male because it made a distinction between gender and biology), it had ideological clarity. In other words, it was not the National Council on Women Societies (NCWS) which also appear to have died too.
The distinctiveness being claimed can be seen in the abstract to the book which says “papers in this book comprise the proceedings of the first seminar on ‘Women in Nigeria’, held at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, on 27-28 May 1982. They have been grouped into parts on theoretical perspectives, women in Nigerian history, women in production, contemporary experiences, and what is to be done? Themes explored include the conception of women’s oppression and liberation, the position of women in pre-colonial Nigerian societies, the penetration of capitalism and its consequences for women in terms of over-exploitation, double oppression and the construction of new gender roles. Contemporary experiences include marriage and the insecurity caused by polygamy, discrimination in inheritance rights and access to education, and the dangers of certain traditional practices, for example in child birth and health care. Women in politics, the media and women’s associations are examined. Practical questions are also raised about organizing Nigerian women and the dimensions of their oppression”
Unfortunately, it died. Why it died remains an unsettled issue and will remain so for as long as the social space is uncontrollably a space of a polyphony of voices, none of which is necessarily right or wrong. That question can never be settled by a right-or-wrong approach because it was not only WIN that died. NANS died, NLC of those days is also dead. It will not be such a terrible thing to say that even ASUU of today is not ASUU of those days anymore. So, why those fronts suffered what they have suffered require a multi-vocal elaboration.
Today, WIN type of gender activism has been taken over by women who are powerful through marriage to men of power and who have their own point of departure to the gender question. Not surprisingly, there has been a shift to gender arithmetic (affirmative allocation of seats, etc). that, again, is not necessarily bad but it is debatable if that doesn’t sidetrack the larger question of how women came to need compensation through quota in the first case.
In that case, the real cause for concern is that of what we can figure out right now as the next set of gender warriors in Nigeria. In a world of untutored/unconscious post humanists who have seized popular imagination through expressivist experimentation that could lead to troubling feminism. Intervention has no money to pay libel charges and would name no names!
