Politics
Meet Nigeria’s First Female Senator – Franca Afegbua
Franca Afegbua was a Nigerian politician who represented Bendel North in the Nigerian Senate in 1983. She was the first elected female senator in Nigeria. She was elected as a senator under the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).
Franca Afegbua was born in Okpella, Edo State on the 20th of October 1943 (Died 12th of March 2023) and completed her post-secondary education in Sofia, Bulgaria. prior to the beginning of the second republic, she worked as a hairdresser in Lagos serving high-income clients. Afegbua had a close relationship with Joseph Tarka, who introduced her to his party, NPN.
In 1983, when she announced her intention to make a challenge for a senatorial seat in Bendel, few felt that she could win. Her party was in opposition and the incumbent governor and senator were respected men in the community. But Afegbua, who had won an international hairstyling competition in 1977, strategized that wooing more women to vote could give her a victory. Her victory in the hairstyling competition had made her name popular within her Etsako community; she targeted women voters and as her campaign gained steam it was too late to curb. She earned a slim victory in the August election, defeating John Umolu.
In a 2022 interview, she said, “People know that women keep to their promises. That was a major factor, a major one. I intended to keep my promises to my people. “I think there has been some improvement since my time. There was no woman in the Senate before me then, but there are women now. Then, I was the only woman, but now, there is more than one. I believe the number will increase gradually.”
The late Senator Afegbua had been praised for her resilience in contesting the election despite being in the opposition party at the time.
The Senate is called the upper chamber of Nigeria’s bicameral legislature. The National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is a bicameral Legislature established under Section 4 of the 1999 Constitution, which consists of 109 Senatorial seats with the 36 states divided into three senatorial districts, each electing one Senator through the implementation of the First-Past-the-Post electoral system. The Federal Capital Territory also elects one senator using the First-Past-the-Post electoral system.
It should be noted that since the general elections of September 1983 when Senator Franca Afegbua was elected the first female Senator in Nigeria, the electoral fortune of women has not seen a dramatic improvement. The number of elected women in Nigeria’s politics remains shockingly low. Today, of a total number of 109 senators in Nigeria’s 9th National Assembly, only 8 are women while Nigeria’s 360-member House of Representatives has only 13 women.
This has led to serious advocacy and demands for special measures to be taken to increase women’s representation in elective offices. Recent constitutional amendment efforts to increase the number of women in the Federal and State legislatures failed to pass, leading to public outcry. Nigeria will need to revisit the bill to be able to catch up with the global trend of improving the participation of women in governance and politics.
Late Senator Franca Afegbua
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