Hadiza El-Rufai, wife of Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai, has emerged chairperson, Northern Governors’ Wives’ Forum (NGWF).
This followed the election of new executive members into the forum on Monday in Abuja.
Mrs El-Rufai who was unanimously elected for a two-year tenure by members of the forum takes over from Amina Bello, wife of Niger State Governor Abubakar Bello.
Olufolake Abdulrazaq (Kwara) was elected the vice chairperson, while Anna Ishaku (Taraba) was elected secretary of the forum and Mariya Tambuwal (Sokoto), welfare officer.
Others are Asma’u Yahaya (Gombe), treasurer; and Regina Lalong (Plateau) PRO.
While urging increased participation of women in politics, El-Rufai harped on the need for women to be given adequate opportunities to contribute to nation building.
According to her, it is so sad that in Nigeria, women have poor record of participation in politics.
“Would you ever have thought that Nigeria would be like that with all the educated women?” she asked.
“We have the vocal women and you know all the women that have paved way before like Mrs Ransome kuti and at this age we are still at this level.
“I think what we should do is to keep mounting pressure so that they would legislate for a certain percentage of seats to be reserved for women.
“This is because we cannot compete equally with the men and we all know this has a lot to do with financial strength and the women are not strong financially.
“It will be a great help if the legislators at the federal and state levels agree to reserve certain number of seats for women.”