Aminu Kano taught us to be adventurous — Hajiya Aisha Ismail
Hajiya Aisha Ismail was Minister of Women Affairs during the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration. She’s currently a delegate from Kano State to the National Conference. In this interview, Hajiya Ismail spoke about the conference, her stint as minister, the Child Rights Act and Kano politics, among others.
What have you been doing since you left as a minister in the Obasanjo administration?
I have not been doing anything much. I have been taking care of my children and generally trying to survive, like all Nigerians do. I am now into private enterprise.
What gave people the impression that you were one of former president Obasanjo’s most powerful ministers?
The powerful tag I don’t know about, but my experience at that time was good. It was after the military government, so there were huge expectations from people on us.
We were all committed, so there was this huge energy we dissipated in putting everything right. Everybody was working round the clock to find answers to the myriad of problems Nigeria had.
What would you say you accomplished as a cabinet minister then?
I was initially in charge of the National Commission for Women and there were a lot of things that we started there, like the National Policy for Women, Children’s Right Law and the youth policy.
We also worked on international commitments, like African protocols. I was particularly very happy about the Children’s Rights Law; to get it even passed into law was not easy. I don’t know if we really tried as hard as we should to fashion a roadmap to gender equity, justice and fair play for our children, youth and women.
The Child’s Rights Act created ripples about its morality, specifically its alleged variance with Islamic injunctions.
How did you handle the situation, coming from Kano which is a conservative Islamic society?
There is a huge misunderstanding here. The Child’s Rights Act is an extension of the Children’s Act of 1954 or 1955. It was just done to reflect the realities of Nigeria. Nigeria had signed the International Law on Child’s Rights. She had also signed the Africa Charter on the Rights of the Child.
We didn’t even stop at signing; we went ahead to ratify these international laws. You can ratify or not, because you have a chance really not to ratify or you can even ratify the provisions. But Nigeria signed and ratified without any reservation.
Now when you sign and you don’t have any reservation, you are expected as a member of the international community to implement. These were some of the things that we incorporated. If you say 0 to 18 is the age of a child and that child needs protection, I don’t think you will be going wrong against the Islamic injunction.
But that was the problem. Now at this stage of 0 to 18, the State, which in this case is Nigeria, is bound to
provide education for that human being, to provide security for that human being, to provide access to services like health and shelter that will make him a complete human being.
At the same time, it is the duty of the State to protect that human being from exploitation. For instance, the law had 280 sections, yet it is only one section that generated all the controversies, because it says all children must go to school. And, of course, we have taken consideration of the laws protecting children; we lifted it verbatim from the Nigerian Common Law and the Penal Code. We didn’t change it, we simply picked it up and made it part of Children’s Rights in one document, instead of being in different documents.
That was the controversy; it had nothing to do with whether a girl cannot marry until she is 18. It just says that human being must have rights.
Another thing is that, in 1991 or 1992, when I was with the National Commission for Women, before I was appointed minister, there was already work done on harmful traditional practices militating against women in Nigeria. There were works like Widowhood Practices, Female Genital Mutilation and Girl-Child Marriage, which was considered a harmful traditional practice because of the prevalence of Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) in Northern Nigeria. At that time, it was estimated that Kebbi state alone had over one million cases and all the sufferers were under the age of 14.
So that was why it was termed a harmful traditional practice and we just incorporated it. It was part of the national law.
What you can say was just the definition, because our children are young persons and the law says from 0 to 14 years. If you can go to the Penal Code and the common law you will find it there. That is what it says about children and young persons. The only conformity for Nigeria was to raise it from 0 to 18 years, but the law has been in existence and we have been practising it in Northern Nigeria.
Talking about politics, have you ever tried running for an elective office, like the House of Representatives, the Senate or even governorship?
If you are going for any elective office in Nigeria, you must have money. The logistics is so expensive. I am totally against this kind of politics because I do not have money. Unless you can harness huge resources from somewhere, you might not be able to run for elective office, and being a woman, I know my limitations.
I have been trying to raise my children. When there is a conflict between their school fees, feeding and going for elective office, definitely I will take care of my social responsibilities first. Maybe later, when I am finished with taking care of these responsibilities and I have extra resources, I will go for elective office. But definitely, I will not shy away from politics.
People wonder about your modern or sophisticated conduct, particularly considering your background from an ultraconservative society like Kano. How do you explain that? Do I lead a modern life? Well, people believe so… It is all a misconception. Kano has never been conservative, because if we have been conservative, we wouldn’t have produced somebody like the late Mallam Aminu Kano, who had an influence on how Kano came up and what we have become than any other person. You don’t have to be an activist or whatever; he made Kano people not to be ashamed and to acquire knowledge at any age. It is in Kano where a 90-year-old, a 60-year-old will go back for adult literacy. Do you understand?
He also inculcated certain values in us within the short time he was on earth. He inculcated in us the values of justice so that people will shun injustice at anytime, anywhere, any day and will fight it. He also gave us the spirit of selfesteem, to believe in ourselves as human beings. Another thing he did to us was to broaden our minds on issues. That is why, probably, it is the only place in Nigeria where you have to win an election. They will not accept imposition; they will not accept wrong candidates. Anybody that emerges must have been the person the people of Kano wanted. So I do not believe I came from a conservative culture.
One of the things that Mallam Aminu Kano did was to change our concept as regards women and their education. It was a priority for him to get women educated and compete in the labour market. I listened to his speeches to understand some things when I was young. He said that, “I feel so sorry for women. You are given a role when you are born, but what you do is to probably get married, have children and die.”
He worked very hard on the issue and that is why you find married women during his time go to school, and while they were going to school, they were participating in politics. So I don’t believe we are conservative in that respect.
Modernity depends on how somebody views it. I always take my society of Kano as a modern one. We have been very dynamic. It’s a kind of society where everybody can trade. I don’t know of any place in Nigeria like Kano, may be apart from Lagos, where you will find different kinds of people meeting to do commerce.
I have always believed in justice. I will not tolerate injustice even by a woman to a man. For instance, isn’t it sheer injustice for a child to work for his sustenance? Is that modernity? Isn’t it sheer injustice for a girl to be married at the age of 12 or 13 to be subjected to a medical condition that she does not need to have, and then, once she has that condition she will be abandoned not only by the husband and his family but also by her own family? She becomes a destitute for life from the early age of 14, 15, 16 and with a health condition. It is an injustice because she does not deserve to go through that. And it is an infringement of her fundamental right to exist as a complete human being. Is that modernity?
To me, the concept of humanity is much more important than a value that demonises humanity even if it is the accepted value of that society, and I think it is the duty of the free human being to prevent anything that dehumanizes another human being. I don’t think I am modern, but I believe in humanity.
In the course of your activism, have you ever felt marginalized because of your gender?
In this country which cuts across cultures, the Nigerian woman has never been a woman that stays at home. May be in some parts, like in a minority part of the North, you can see women sitting at home in purdah. There is no woman in Nigeria who can say she stays at home without any economic activity. The moment she assumes the role of motherhood, she must earn something one way or the other.
At the same time, whatever she does to earn is invisible in the Nigerian system. In farming, women in Nigeria take care of some of the linkages that make up agriculture. But nobody sees the work that they do - harvesting, planting and food processing. Nobody sees all that and it is not considered an economic activity. Majority of teachers in Nigeria are female but when you work in a predominantly male sector, of course, the tendency is that it will make you invisible. It is like you are sitting at the back and you have to be screaming every day, “please, I am here.”
If a job consists of six hours work for it to be qualitative, a woman has to put in eight to 10 hours so that she can be recognized to be doing a qualitative job. A man can make one million mistakes on the same job and he will be ignored.
So that was one of the challenges I met, that I had to work too hard too much for my contribution or my output to be recognised. Don’t forget that while you are working, you have to take care of the home. I can remember going to the office with my babies, crying because my child is sick, going to the hospital, and all sorts of things.
When I was a commissioner, I can remember coming home with my files and I would go straight to the kitchen to start my work.
At the same time, you wanted to prove that you could be a superwoman. So you will be putting in extra efforts. I could ask a maid or a cook to do the weekly food shopping, I would find myself waking up early, or I could get somebody to clean but I would still feel that I had to do it because I feel I was a housewife too.
Which political party do you belong to?
I was an ANPP candidate. ANPP, I can say, co-opted me, and while we were serving, the party asked all of us serving Obasanjo to resign. They announced it over the radio without any consultation, no meeting whatsoever. We just heard it. We did not resign and they expelled us and the PDP co-opted me.
After the job, I have not been active in the party. I am just a cardcarrying member. I found that after some time the PDP ideology, as being promoted and the programmes being implemented by the PDP government disillusioned me completely, so I felt the best thing for me is to be aloof and not to be part of any party and then may be when I am ready for an elective office, I would be one of those people that may come out as independent candidates, or may be a party will come that can satisfy our yearnings of a good party.
I want to belong to a party that will have an economic programme that will uplift the well-being of Nigerians, a party that understands that the well-being of the people is actually the security of the nation, a party that will dedicate itself to the welfare of children, and that means every Nigerian child will be in school and will have breakfast, lunch and dinner and with shoes on his feet when he goes to school.
I want to belong to a party that will develop an employment programme so that when you say unemployment, you will be talking of 10 to 15 per cent of the youth, not even 25 per cent. I also would
wish to see a party that will bring real economic development, that we will see actual economic growth and not mythical economic growth and figures. I wish that kind of political party will come up and I will be one of the first people on the queue to take my card.
Now that you are nominated by an opposition administration to come to the conference, are you not a member of the APC?
I was nominated because I am an indigene of Kano, so actually, I came here not representing any party but the people of Kano. Since the APC is the party governing my state, as a citizen of Kano state, I definitely have sympathy for the APC. I have a sympathy for my governor. But I am not a member of the APC.
I have sympathy for my governor because he is performing. He is working. I feel that is how governors should be anywhere. It should not even be a question of debate. When you come to serve, you must improve the welfare of the people. To me, that’s what the governor of Kano state is doing. I can definitely compare the time he came with what Kano is now. In just three years, he has transformed the society in a positive way what cannot be done in eight years in some states. What cannot be done even in 16 years has been done in Kano in only three years.
At the National Conference, some delegates are saying that the system is bad, the Constitution should be abolished and there must be change. To what extent do you agree with all these?
Nigerians like to play to the gallery. What is wrong with Nigeria’s constitution? A constitution is actually a statement of intentions, a reflection of your dreams. It does not need the whole of Nigeria to write the constitution. If some people think we need 150 million people to sit down and write the constitution as the only way to legitimize the document, I think that is very wrong.
For me, there is nothing wrong with the Nigerian constitution. All constitutions in the world were initially written by a few people. The American constitution was written by a few people. You can use the constitution to implement programmes and design a way of life that will uplift you as a people. If you find lapses in the constitution, you periodically review and amend it.
But ultimately, it is the people that can create actions that support those statements. When you write you want a road from here to Gwarzo, saying you need it is a statement, the actual action is when I see the road. Does changing the constitution change the mentality of Nigerians? Does that reduce their capacity for massive theft? Does that change their attitude towards justice and fair play for everybody? Does it change their attitude towards malpractices? Or change even the election of their leaders, knowing full well that those leaders are self-centred and a bad electorate can only produce bad leaders? Will changing the constitution change all that?
If you want to change a structure, you can and you don’t even need constitutional statements to do all that. If you want federalism or regionalism, you can put it in the constitution. But all this exercise is just unnecessary dispensing of our energy on trivialities instead of facing the realities. One of the realities now is that economic mismanagement is our problem.
What are your expectations of the conference, with your colleagues squabbling over inconsequential, parochial issues? Should Nigerians expect something credible from the conference?
In a situation comprising almost 500 people, there must be individual thoughts. Nigerians are very well mentally endowed. We debate all the time. We are perpetually debating, talking and interacting. In the process, we will have different opinions; there will be expression of both collective and different opinions.
That is what is bringing all these. Delegates try to get their thoughts right and put them across for their demands to be accepted. The fear is of a minority imposing a minority decision. For instance, if you have 100 people and one third of them would be making a decision, that is a minority decision but it can become a majority because you have gotten the one-third. That was the reason for the squabbles but we have sorted it out. Nigerians must learn that the bigger, the wider the acceptance of any thought or idea, the better for everybody. You can see that we have converged. There is no divergent view on corruption in Nigeria, for example. Everybody wants to see an end to it.
What assurances do you have that this three months conference won’t be like those usual talk shows, full of noise but signifying nothing meaningful?
It has always been that Nigerians produce the most beautiful, viable document for implementation but always lack the will to implement it. For instance, everybody agrees it is necessary for Nigeria to have an economic redirection. This conference will have an even mechanism for the redirection. This conference will not be the implementation agent of the redirection; it will be the National Assembly and the Executive. They should have the political will to implement the strategy.
The people we have at the Conference have the quality to genuinely proffer solutions and give us the roadmap to a better Nigeria. But what happens at the end of the day when the Executive have implementation in their hands, because this conference is not designed to implement anything, I don’t know. The only thing we can do is to design the programme. What will be your advice? My advice is that Nigerians should just not be talking and lamenting. They put the National Assembly legislators there, so why can’t they make them to be responsible to their (the people’s) needs?
The federal legislators approve the budget for the president. Have they done their work sincerely to ensure they approve budgets that can bring genuine development to the people? And I don’t mean just structures; I mean genuine development for the people that they represent.
Have they made it possible for the Nigerian youth to be employed? If they have not, then the National Assembly members are not doing their job. These are some of the things that the people, the electorate should be questioning their representatives about. It is all about mismanagement by the leaders and stealing the people’s money.
If the National Assembly members are not serving their people, then Nigerians have to have a rethink. It means the process of the election is not only faulty, even us as the agents of the election process are at fault. It means we are not doing the right thing by putting bad politicians in important political offices.
If the people can declare they are tired of some leaders stealing money that belongs to them, if they can declare they are tired of wasting their money on some politicians who just go to political offices and do nothing meaningful, we will all benefit from the end result.
On the recommendations of this conference, when we are through with our job, the result will be taken to the Executive. They will put up a small committee and the committee will sit down and write a White Paper. The committee will hand over the White Paper to the Executive in a hail of ceremony and that will be the end of the story. But Nigerians can insist on having the final say on endorsement of the committee’s recommendations.
How? Is referendum?
A referendum is one-way. The Executive can take the conclusions to the people, let them endorse
it
through
a and make them part of their new direction. So it is up to the people. I am confident that the people we have at the National Conference will produce a new direction definitely.
Nigeria has just surpassed South Africa as the biggest economy in Africa. Is this worthy of any celebration?
This is a joke. It is a practical joke on Nigerians. It is an April Fool, because, there is no way you can be a big economy when you are almost zero productive. Economic size is determined by your productivity. Nigeria is not a producing nation.
We are not producing anything, we are just exporting oil which does not give room for employment, and therefore it has no human value. Now, central to any economic development or growth is employment. It was employment that was the origin of the Breton Woods initiative. For an economy to be adjudged to be a growing economy, there must be remarkable employment figures. Today, Nigeria has been rated by the same Office of Statistics to have about 75 per cent employable Nigerians that are unemployed or under-employed.
Now, if we are 75 per cent unemployed, you don’t have to go into any economic jargon to know that your factories are not producing, and to know that you are a dumping ground. Everything is being imported, even ordinary toothpick. What we celebrate here are Made in China toothpick, Made in China drinks, Made in China whatever.
We are producing less than 15 per cent of your needs. Beside oil, I don’t even know what Nigeria is exporting today; we don’t even have the indices. So tell me, how our economy can be bigger than that of South Africa when South Africa has invaded your economic space? They are making more in your own country than your own output. And then here, such factors that encourage economic growth, like power, roads, sound health of the labour force are pitiably lacking. The educational sector has almost collapsed.
I looked at it as a gimmick to sort of pacify Nigerians. Definitely, we are a poor nation and it has been shown by the same World Bank that Nigeria is one of the topmost three countries where people live in extreme poverty.
So how do you have all these negative indices and you say your economy is the 24th in the world? Only human beings create wealth. It is the aggregate of their individual contribution in wealth creation that determines the national wealth. There is nothing like savings because almost everybody is just trying to survive, with the exception of only about five per cent. And there is a complete disconnect between the five per cent and the Nigerian people. And there is massive corruption.
How will you say you are the 24th biggest economy in the world when all the indices of development are all negative? I don’t understand why the Nigerian Finance Ministry can come up with this gimmick. They know how hard it is for Nigerians to survive in the country. I think it is a very bad; a proper dissemination of truthful information will be better for us at this time if we want to change our direction. We should not toy with the lives of the people. Even if we wanted to gain points, we have to get them on realities and not the way it has been presented to us.
I am sure that Nigeria’s economy is not the 24th largest economy in the world. And I am also sure that Nigeria’s economy is not bigger than that of South Africa.