Issues
Gender Budgeting And Millennium Development Goals
This is a paper presented by a member of the Kenyan National Assembly, Dr Joyce Laboso at the 40th Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, Africa Regional Conference in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State Capital.
The Millennium Development goals (MDGs) are a set of eight (8) goals that were agreed upon at the UN Millennium Summit in New York in 2000, and aimed at fast tracking progress in achieving sustainable development and redressing inequalities all around the globe.
The MDGs contain time-bound targets in key sector areas to be achieved by 2015 in tackling the most pressing issues facing the world today namely- poverty, hunger, illiteracy, gender inequality, child and maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS and environmental degradation.
The achievements in all the eight (8) MDGs provide a strategy through which countries can address human suffering and especially the plight of women who constitute more than 50 per cent of the total population.
In this regard, governments must seriously and systematically ‘engender’ efforts to achieve all the goals.
Such efforts must, of necessity, include engendering the national budgets by systematically and deliberately allocating resources for activities that address the plight of the disadvantaged gender which in Africa is women.
Gender Budgeting – What is it?
It is the process of incorporating gender concerns in the entire budgeting process. On the whole, budgets are gender blind. Gender-blind budgets do not consider that women and men have different roles, responsibilities, capabilities and commitments. They ignore the economic and social differences that exist between women and men.
A gender budget is therefore a budget that has accounted for the direct and indirect effects of a government’s expenditure, allocations and revenues on both women and men. Making sure there is a specific allocation for programmes specially tailored to address the concerns of the disadvantaged gender.
Why a Gender Budget ?
Gender Budgeting is important and relevant to governments in various ways. It assists to promote equity, equality, efficiency and transparency in the budget process including the realisation of social, economic and cultural rights and good governance. It offers a practical way of evaluating governments inaction or action and the progress made towards gender equality by focusing on the weight of government’s financial commitment attached programmes and their impact on the lives of women. The budget can be used as a tool to consciously ensure that governments and other government institutions focus on disadvantaged groups such as women, youth people with disabilities (PWDs) and people living with HIV and AIDS.
Gender budgeting allows governments to prepare and review their national budgets through promoting policy and resource allocation from a gender perspective. It further proposes that government expenditure on programmes and projects reveal a differential impact between men and women that aims at improving the life of women and girls especially in marginalised areas.
A gender budget can also act as an instrument for holding the government accountable to its gender equality obligations. Sustainable development requires a deeper understanding of the fact that men and women have different development priorities needs and constraints and are therefore affected differently by development interventions.
50:50% budgetary allocation for men, women, boys and girls is not enough to address gender imbalances for gender budgeting but the percentages should be as per the identified needs of men, women, boys and girls after analysis. A gender budget thus attempts to transform budgets from an exercise of resource allocation to tools for social change.
Why Focus on Women?
Gender budgeting is not about women. However, women, especially in Africa have been disadvantaged for many reasons and for so long and this notwithstanding that they constitute majority of the population in the continent. For example, there has been low level of representation in parliamentary politics where most decisions affecting women are made.
The economy has a gender hierarchy because of the social construction hierarchy because it is made up of the productive and reproductive activities and the latter is the woman’s domain. Productive activities are given monetary value and go into the GDP whereas reproductive activities happen mostly within the households and are not accounted for in the GDP. E.g., When a woman takes care of her children, it is reproductive and is not accounted for, whereas when she takes her child to a day care centre to be looked after, she pays for the services and it becomes productive services. The same as when one washes their clothes at home; it is reproductive whereas when one takes them to the laundry, it is productive services.
Women have unique insights and gifts to the development process which need to be exploited. They are resource mobilizers as seen from their merry-go-rounds in the community; they are peace builders because they understand the consequences of wars, violence and conflicts on them; and they are united towards achieving goals as demonstrated in their numerous successful self-help women groups. Women play multiple roles in the society and therefore it is of utmost importance to educate them and allow them to have a voice in decision making that is critical in achieving the MDGs. Empowering women will accelerate the achievement of these goals. For example, access to education and health is key indicator to economic growth, poverty reduction and alleviation of child mortality rates and eradication of malnutrition.
Situation in Kenya
In Kenya, there exists gross inequalities between men and women. The economic disempowerment of women constitutes a major obstacle to the government’s efforts at alleviation of poverty. According to the Kenya Integrated Budget Household survey (KIBHS), 2005/6, women constitute 50.5 per cent of the total population. The survey further reveals that poverty has gender dimensions; with female headed households being more likely to have higher poverty prevalence compared to male- headed households.
Within the East Africa region, Kenya has the lowest percentage of women representatives in Parliament. In the current 10th- Parliament, there are 22 female Parliamentarians out of a house of 222.This mere 10 per cent representation has major implications on the articulation and implementation of women’s agenda in Parliament. The fact is that women are under represented in decision-making positions notwithstanding a Presidential directive that in all public service appointments, there must be a one-third representation of women.
Women remain largely absent at the levels of policy formulation and decision-making and are underrepresented in policy decision making positions. Even where they are present, they may not be equal participants due to rampant masculinity. Women are the central caretakers of families yet continue to experience suffering occasioned by oppression, violence and exclusion from full participation in nation building. They are central to community development initiative which characterises rural development practices and policies. Therefore, have the potential to boost economic development through their actions. Their centrality to communal life makes their inclusion in decision making essential, and subsequently the need for gender responsive budget.
The budgetary process in Kenya has gradually focused on gender issues. Poverty, education and health sectors have been given priority in the budget allocation process and the expenditure awarded to these sectors has also increased tremendously. In Kenya, the government has developed poverty eradication policies and strategies such as the National Poverty Eradication Plan, NPEP (1999-2015); the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, PRSP (2001-2004), the National Development Plan, NDP (2002-2008) and the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth & Employment Creation, ERSWEC (2003-2007) which all need to be fully implemented and require full participation of men and women. Free primary and secondary education that takes it mandatory for all children who have attained the school going age to access education has been crucial in bridging the wide gap between male and female access to education. In the past priority in education by most cultures in Kenya was given to the boy-child who was viewed to have more potential value to the families while the girl child was neglected since her role was seen to be mainly focused in the domestic domain which is deemed by the society as requiring no formal education.
Role of Parliamentarians
Parliament through the enactment of gender responsive legislation will ensure that resources are allocated to meet the needs of various sectors of society. Gender sensitive budgetary estimates: Parliament has a key role to ensure that budgetary estimates that are approved are gender sensitive and promote gender equality at all levels of society. Oversight on gender sensitive expenditure by government: Through its oversight functions, Parliament can in reviewing government expenditure and investment examine gender concerns and put government to account. Gender Budgeting Sensitisation of communities: MPs ought to support sensitization initiatives for their constituents on gender and the economy to enable women to realise positive change e.g., enable the women to engage with CDF, LATIF, Constituency Aids and Bursary fund, Youth and Women funds. In doing this, the MPs should collaborate with other government structures, including local government, provincial administration and with civil society groups.
MPs must recognize the local governance structures at the lower level and gender sensitise them to be gender sensitive and to mainstream gender in their work. Parliament has demonstrated political leadership in the domestication of the international MDGs following the establishment of the Parliamentary Caucus on Poverty and the MDGs with the objective of exercising advocacy efforts aimed at ensuring the country fast track implementation of action programmes to reduce poverty and achieve MDGs by 2015. Parliament has also established a Committee on Equal Opportunity.
Rt. Hon. Tonye Harry, new President, Commonwealth Parliamentary Association
This is an open letter to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Nyesom Wike.
Your Excellency,
Sir, ordinarily, I would not be writing an open letter to you, but like a wise man once said, “Silence would be Treason.” So I prefer to stay alive than face the consequences of silence in the face of crime. With each passing day, and as the socio-political tides continue to turn, it has become more pertinent that more people speak up in a concerted MANNER to prevent the death of our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as we appear to be, in the words of W. B. Yeats, “turning and turning in the widening gyre” heading for an end where the falcon will no longer hear the falconer
It is unfortunate that since losing control of the Federal Government, with the loss of President Goodluck Jonathan at the poll in 2015, our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has continued on a downward spiral. It is much more painful, that where it is expected that leaders within the party should rise to the challenge and put an end to this decline of our great party, some have instead taken up roles as its undertaker.
It will be hypocritical to claim aloofness to what I believe is your grouse with the PDP and I am not a hypocrite. It will be uncharitable on my part to discountenance the role you have played in strengthening the PDP from 2015 up until the last Presidential primaries of the party. It is my belief that your grouse against certain members of the party who you perceived worked against the party and abandoned it in 2015 and then came around much later to take control of the party, is justified. Also know that your decision to remain in the Party and stifle its progress on the other hand, as a sort of payback, stands condemned. For a man of your pedigree and stature, it is a dishonorable act, highly dishonorable and stands as testimony against all you claim to stand for.
At least, it can be argued that those who you hold this grudge against, abandoned the party completely and did not sit back while actively working to destroy it from within. But what then can be the argument on your own part, seeing that those you are currently working with against your party are the same people who set in motion, and executed surgically, the plans that not only ended our Party’s leadership at the centre, but ended up dislodging the first Niger Deltan to occupy Aso Rock as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Is this not akin to “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face?” That will be worse than folly. Let us not throw away the baby with the bath water because we do not like the soap used in bathing the baby. It will be a grave mistake.
Honourable Minister, sir, it is rather unfortunate that of all people, you have also decided to play the role of an undertaker not only for our party, but for our dear Rivers State.
I will like to take you down memory lane a little. Let me remind you of your emergence as Guber candidate of the PDP in Rivers State, against all fairness and justice in 2014. You will remember that despite the reality being that you as an Ikwerre man was poised to replace a fellow Ikwerre man in Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi in our multiethnic state, Rivers people overwhelmingly stood by you and pushed for your emergence as Executive Governor of Rivers State in 2015. I dare say that your popularity in the entire Niger Delta region was at an all-time high at this point.
I want you to understand why you were loved across board leading to your eventual emergence as Governor of Rivers State in 2015; it was because when it looked like all were against the second term ambitions of the first Niger Delta man to emerge as President of Nigeria, you became not just a pillar but a beacon of resistance by standing for Goodluck Jonathan. Rivers people, as grateful and rewarding as they can be, paid you back by ensuring your electoral victory against the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) led by your predecessor. On your emergence, where there were second term Governors in the region, you, a first term Governor, was seen by the people as not just the leader of the PDP, but the leader of the entire Niger Delta region. You earned it, and no one could dispute it.
In 2019, when your re-election bid was being challenged ferociously, Rivers people once again stood solidly behind you. Many were killed in the process of defending your votes. Do you remember Dr. Ferry Gberegbe that was shot and killed while trying to protect your votes in Khana Local Government Area? There are many more unnamed and unrecognised sons and daughters of Rivers State who sacrificed their lives so that you could emerge as a second term Governor of Rivers State.
In 2022/23, Honourable Minister, you oversaw a party primary across board that saw some candidates imprisoned and internal party democracy jettisoned for your wishes, leading to the emergence of flag bearers of our party all singlehandedly picked by you. You have on more than one occasion publicly stated that you paid for all their forms. Even those shortchanged in this process licked their wounds and continued to play their roles as party members to ensure the success of the party at all levels. In what will go down as one of the most keenly contested elections in recent Rivers history, with formidable candidates like Senator Magnus Abe of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Mr Tonye Cole of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the vibrant youth driven Labour Party (LP), PDP emerged victorious across board except for Phalga Constituency 1 that was lost to the Labour Party. (Not that you did not loose in some other LGA’s but let’s stick to the official figures declared by INEC).
It begs the question, why then do you want to burn down Rivers State, when everyone who now holds political office emerged through a process designed and endorsed by you? Is it that you do not care about Rivers people and you are all about yourself? If so, I am forced to believe that those around you are not telling you the truth. The truth being that in a state where your words were law; where houses and businesses could be demolished or closed down without any recourse to legalities, where Executive Orders could be deployed to stifle the opposition, that your popularity is now at an all-time low. Probably because they are afraid of you, or of losing the benefits they gain from you, they fail to tell you that what you might perceive as a battle against your successor, has slowly but gradually degenerating into a battle against Rivers State and Rivers people. You know, there is a popular saying that, a man can cook for the community and the community will finish the food, but when a community decides to cook for one man, the reverse is the case.
LEAVE FUBARA ALONE
You have gone on and on about being betrayed by Governor Siminalayi Fubara. You point fingers forgetting that some of those same fingers quick to spot betrayals point straight back at you. It is not Governor Fubara that has betrayed the PDP by working against it in the just concluded General Election, and working with the opposition at the State and Federal level to destabilise the party. It is you, Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that betrayed Rivers people by instigating a political crisis with propensity to escalate ethnic tensions in Rivers State. It is you Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that has declared himself God over all in Rivers State and has no qualms with burning the state to the ground to prove a point. It is you Honourable Minister. It is you Honourable Minister who told the world that the APC was a cancer and you can never support a cancerous party. It is you Honourable Minister who ended up facilitating the emergence of the same “cancerous” APC that has accelerated the economic decline of this country and further impoverished our people with no remorse. All so you can be a Minister of the Federal Capital Territory? The lack of self awareness is gobsmacking.
Some days back I came across a video where you talked about death and how you do not cry when you hear about the death of some people because you have no idea what might have caused it considering many a politician swear “over dead bodies” and still go back on their words. Those words made me think, and I could see the reason behind them. You see, in chosing to be God in the affairs of Rivers people, you have closed your eyes and ears to reason; you see nothing and hear nothing that can cause you to rethink on the path you have chosen. In your quest to “show Fubara” you have unwittingly united a vast majority of Rivers people behind him, so much that even those who despised him because of you, now like or love him, because of you too. In your scheming, I will advise you not to forget that “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Note that the war which you have or are waging against Governor Fubara, has gone beyond being merely political as you might see in your minds eye. It is now one that, fortunately for some and unfortunately for others, has evolved into a war against Rivers people. It is good to point out that no one has taken a stand against Rivers people and won. No one has gone against God and won. In your defiant characteristic manner, it will be unfortunate if you believe your own hubris and that of those around you on the possibility of you being the first to successfully go against Rivers people. It will be a needless gamble; one where if you win you create more enemies for yourself than you can withstand on your political journey, and if you lose, your legacy becomes an inglorious and irredeemable one in Rivers State, the Niger Delta, and Nigeria at large. For your sake as regards posterity, it is my greatest wish that you have a moment of sobriety and a deep reflection and introspection on this path you have chosen.
Honourable Minister, sir, what is left of your legacy is on the brink of being completely desecrated and relegated to the dustbin of our political history, and it will be a sad end to what I will say has been a wonderful political career that many can only dream of. The ball is in your court, and may God Almighty have mercy on us all and forgive us for our shortcomings.
Gabriel Baritulem Pidomson
Dr Pidomson is former Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt and former member, Rivers State House of Assembly.
In 2015, I made a conscious decision to invest my financial resources, my time, and energy into supporting Nyesom Wike’s gubernatorial campaign. I poured my heart and soul into ensuring Nyesom Wike emerged victorious even at the risk of my personal safety.
Again in 2019, I doubled down on my commitment. I invested a significant amount of money to procure campaign outfits for all twenty-three Local Governments Areas of Rivers State. I spared no expense in supplementing Wike’s election efforts in my own local government, and once again putting myself at great risk to safeguard the fairness and transparency of the electoral process.
However, despite my unwavering loyalty and sacrifices, I found myself abandoned and forgotten by Wike. Throughout his eight-year tenure, he failed to acknowledge my contributions or fulfill his promises and agreements. Even as a former Deputy Governor, Wike denied me my severance benefit.
My investment in Wike’s governorship was not just financial – it was a commitment of passion, dedication, and belief in a better future for Rivers State. Yet, his leadership style of dishonesty, greed, drunkenness and rash abuse of senior citizens brought me nothing but disappointment, misery and losses.
By the grace of God, today I speak not as a victim, but as a hero. I have accepted my losses, and I have moved on. And as I reflect on my experience, I cannot help but urge Wike to do the same and allow peace and development to reign in Rivers State.
Nyesom Wike, when you speak of investing in Governor Sim Fubara’s election, remember those like me who also invested in you. Remember the sacrifices I made, the risks I took, and the promises and agreements you left unfulfilled.
It is time for you, Wike, to let go of the past and allow Governor Sim Fubara the breathing space he needs to lead Rivers State forward. Allow him to focus on the challenges of good governance and the aspirations of the people. Spare him these unwarranted and ill-conceived political manoeuvrings founded on personal agenda and not for general good of Rivers State and her people.
I may have lost my investment on Wike, but I have not lost hope in the future of Rivers State. And together, we will continue to strive for a brighter tomorrow.
Long Live the Governor to Rivers State, Sir Siminialayi Fubara!
Long Live the Good People of Rivers State!!
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!!!
Engr Ikuru is former Deputy Governor of Rivers State.
Tele Ikuru
