Women’s Stance and Subjectivity in Nigerian Politics

Abstract

On March 1st, 2022, the male-dominated federal parliament of Nigerian National Assembly voted against five (5) gender equality bills which were proposed to strengthen democratic practice and ensure the full participation of women and equitable representation in governance. These proposals are in dissonance with Agenda Five of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sixty-three years after gaining independence from the colonial masters, Nigerian women still struggle for representation in elective politics, and this poses as one of the development challenges in Africa. Several scholars have explored this under-representation in politics from the cultural, economic, and social perspectives. However, the linguistic portrayal of women, as better candidates in politics, has not been given adequate scholarly attention. Therefore, this study specifically explores the engagement of stance and subjectivity in the discourse of female gubernatorial and senatorial candidates towards projecting positive self-image, voicing opinions and raising women’s consciousness in Nigerian political context towards the actualization of Goal Five of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa. The study engages discourse stylistics in establishing the resourcefulness of stance-taking and subjectivity in women’s projection of credibility in elective politics. In furtherance of that, Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) complements the framework in contextualizing the political discourses. With data gathered from the interview responses of three gubernatorial and three senatorial aspirants towards Elections in the Fourth Republic, this paper unveils the extent Nigerian women have gone in negotiating for wider representation and projecting themselves as better candidates in a male-dominated Nigerian politics.

Keywords: Women discourse, Stance, Subjectivity, Nigerian politics, SDGs