Nigerian lawmakers reject bill seeking gender equality

BERLIN – The seats in Germany’s parliament will have to be rearranged after lawmakers on Thursday backed the wish of one party in the new coalition government not to sit next to the far-right Alternative for Germany.

The seats in Germany’s lower house, or Bundestag, are arranged in a semicircle, with the Left Party at one end and Alternative for Germany, or AFD, at the other. AFD first won seats in 2017. Before then, the pro-business Free Democrats had occupied that edge of the semicircle when they were represented in parliament.

The Free Democrats, who along with the center-left Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the environmentalist Greens are part of the new government that took office last week, said earlier this year that they didn’t

want to sit next to Afd’s lawmakers anymore.

LAGOS, Nigeria – Nigerian senators rejected, for the third time in five years, a bill that seeks to promote gender equality, citing “socio-cultural and Islamic concerns.”

The proposed law was dropped after some lawmakers – mostly northern Muslims – in the country’s upper legislative chamber argued that it went against their interpretation of their religion’s principles.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, is deeply divided along religious and ethnic lines, and women rarely make it to top positions of power – including in the senate where only 7% of the senators are women.

The bill would criminalize discrimination on the ground of gender or marital status, and also seeks to better enforce existing laws on gender-based violence. But for many of the lawmakers during Wednesday’s plenary session, it was strictly a religious issue.