On Wednesday, President Bola Tinubu extended a list of 19 ministerial nominees to the Senate. This took the total number of nominees to 47.

The only other time a president has nominated so many people was in 1999 when President Olusegun Obasanjo put together the same number of nominees for the Senate’s approval.

In Obasanjo’s second term, the number dropped to 33, and presidents after him nominated from 39 to 44 ministers in line with the federal character provision of the constitution.

But despite the need to nominate at least one person from each state of the federation, experts and some Nigerians have called for the government to cut the cost of governance. This is probably being interpreted by successive presidents as cutting the number of female ministerial nominees.

In 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari nominated 36 people for ministerial appointments, the least since 2003, but despite having three more nominees than Obasanjo, Buhari only had one more female.

In 2019, Buhari had eight more ministers than he did four years earlier, but only one of those extra eight was a female.

Now, President Tinubu has outdone Buhari in his ministerial nominations, but of his 47 nominees, only nine are females. This represents 19.1 percent of his nominees.

A FAILED PROMISE

On May 29, during Tinubu’s inauguration, the president promised to give special attention to women and youths in line with the 35 percent affirmative action for women, but with only 19.1 percent in his cabinet, the president is yet to fulfil that promise.

On July 24, Pauline Tallen, immediate past minister of women affairs, challenged the president to keep his word. At the time, the president was yet to extend any list to the Senate.

The closest any Nigerian president has come to hitting 35 percent female nomination was in 2011 when President Goodluck Jonathan nominated 41 ministers, of which 13 were women. This was a 31.7 percent female representation.

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The females now nominated by Tinubu are Hannatu Musawa, Betta Edu, Doris Uzoka, Nkiru Onyejiocha, Stella Okotete, Uju Ohaneye, Imaan Ibrahim, Lola Ade John and Maryam Shetti.

Meanwhile, there are 38 male nominees. This means that for every female nominee, there are 4.2 male nominees.

Of the nine females, three are from Nigeria’s southeast, two are from the south-south, two from the northwest, one from the north-central and one from the southwest. All but the northeast geopolitical zone have female ministerial nominees.

In total, there are six female nominees from the south, and three from the north.