The Concept of First Lady and Politics in Nigeria

Kunle Ajayi. The Concept of First Lady and Politics in Nigeria. Dakar, CODESRIA, 2010, 72 p. ISBN : 978-2-86978-304-1

Women in Nigeria remain victims of gender discrimination, especially in politics. This monograph examines the possibility of utilizing the First Lady’s institution to achieve gender mainstreaming and consequently terminate the sustained feminine marginality in Nigerian politics. The study finds that the First Lady’s office is self-serving as successive First Ladies since the Babangida military era are merely utilizing their positions to mobilize and rally support for their husbands in power. And, depressingly too, the First Ladies used their esteemed positions to exploit the Nigerian rural women, whose poor political and economic lives, ordinarily, they were supposed to use their vantage position to transform for the better. Ultimately, therefore, the First Lady institution in Nigeria is just a conduit pipe for satisfying the material psychology of the First Ladies and bolstering the women’s political support for their ruling husbands.

Dr Kunle Ajayi is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria. He has published widely in local and international journals, including the Nigerian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, the African Journal of Public Administration and Management, Studies of Tribes and Tribals, The Social Sciences and the Journal of Social Sciences. Professor Ajayi is an awardee of the CODESRIA Advanced Research Fellowship and a pioneer Fellow of the Council’s Child and Youth Institute. He is also a Fellow of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Relations, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and a member of the International Political Science Association.

Source: http://www.codesria.org/spip.php?article793&lang=fr