A candidate’s message for Nigerian politics: Make way for women
As she made her way along a lumpy dirt road clutching a stack of her own campaign flyers, Zainab Umar considered the odds against her.
In the entire 40-year history of the local House of Assembly here, in the most populous state in Nigeria’s north, a woman has never been elected as a member. In her own crowded race, there are more men named Abdullahi than there are women. Of the 32 candidates, just two are female.
And in many races here, Ms. Umar suspected, the campaigns hardly counted, anyway. In the days before elections, for as long as she could remember, candidates for the two major parties rode into her neighborhood in their clean, expensive cars doling out little bags of salt, thick wedges of soap, and crisp 1000 naira bills ($3).
But as she made her way into a mud-brick compound on the fringes of the city last Friday, she shoved the thought out of her head, plastered a
Bucking the trendExtra scrutiny‘It’s the time for a woman’
