THE WSRN CONSULTATIVE MEETING
THE WSRN CONSULTATIVE MEETING @ ROBAN HOTELS ON 30TH MARCH, 2016
Meeting commenced at exactly 9am with Zariyatu Abubakar leading the opening prayer. Participants went on to introduce themselves after which the National Coordinator, Joy Onyesoh gave her welcome address. She thanked the participants for their presence at the meeting.
MAIN GOAL
To strategize on ways to build a new structure for the Women Situation Room in Nigeria.
REVIEW OF WSR ACTIVITIES IN THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTIONS
Benue – Coordinator from Benue, Magdalene said that advocacy measures were adopted during the 2015 elections monitoring. She noted that the broadcast media was also used to reach out to the people.
Some of the challenges she identified included, refusal by observers to return the phone issued to them, their lack of knowledge on how to send text messages and/or inability to send text messages, the non-function of the app and also difficulty in accessing the call center.
Gombe- The Coordinator from Gombe, Zariyatu identified the fear of Boko Haram attack as the major challenge faced. She said though a call center was set up, those on the field were hardly accessible. She noted that following the short time frame in planning, they had to make do with the few women they got to work with them. Furthermore, INEC access card as well as the gathering of political parties together was cited as an issue.
Kaduna – Philomena, Coordinator from Kaduna State said the thirty (30) women involved in monitoring were very cooperative. They were also given pre-election observation forms to ensure they were nonpartisan and did not involve in any illegal activity. She said they were given strict warning not to mingle with politicians. She also added that cooperation from the military and police made the work easy.
According to her some of the women were earlier captured using their husbands numbers, this made it difficult at the initial stage for the situation room to receive reports from them even after issuing new phones to the women. Forms were given to them and it helped ensure the phones were returned.
The National Coordinator, Joy Onyesoh stated that the essence of the review was to get people to share their experience firsthand. Bridget Osakwe of WANEP Nigeria, in agreement with the president’s statement, informed the house of the conflict monitoring situation room set up in the west zone which was identified as a peace builder room. She pointed out the need for emphasis to be based on Conflict Sensitivity. She also suggested the use of pre-arranged gatherings where market women and other community groups meet in order to reach out to the locals as well as cut cost. She added that women who are independent should be selected in the next coming election process, highlighting the idea of early preparation towards the election. Furthermore, she suggested that advocacy visits are not focused only on people in government but also towards other key women who can be instrumental.
COMMUNICATION REVIEW FOR 2015 WSR
Some of the tools used in the Communication Mix include TV, radio, program sponsorship, Press Release and Digital materials.
Sola Odeja, media consultant revealed that funding for the media campaign came in late resulting to the selective TV and radio campaign across the states. He made a presentation of digital analysis as it affects gender. He suggested the need to articulate the way forward on campaign such as starting the process of fund raising early so as to avoid limitations.
With reference to the media presentation, Joy Onyesoh noted that it was quite revealing and should be adopted as a guide. Bridget of WANEP also added that the gender disparity among women on ICT was huge so the need for the development of a training manual.
PRESENTATION ON WOMEN SITUATION ROOM NIGERIA
This presentation was done by Joy Onyesoh.
The situation room was seen as a process with the following four key roles;
- To build capacity of women to participate in election process.
- To connect women who share passion of peaceful election process.
- To advocate for women’s political empowerment.
- To ensure non partisan political and civil dialogues between civil society, government and other groups on policies related to women’s participation in the electoral process.
She suggested that the engagement of the 36 states could be achieved through the unimaginable. First step was to have the six geopolitical zones coordinators handling the processes in these areas. Some of the tasks included:
- Nomination state coordinators while working closely with the national coordinator. Also review of relevant policies; mapping and building relationship with relevant key players (stakeholders)
- Coordinate the preparation for zonal meetings and implementations of activities. Activities such as, preparing concept notes and budget for activities; identifying resource persons; preparing any background papers required; conducting advocacy to key relevant stakeholders; preparing geo- political zone report; and supporting state coordinators to collate and transmit reports.
- Any other tasks as jointly agreed on.
Joy Onyesoh tasked the geopolitical zonal coordinators to go back draw up their budget and put together their concept note stating that approval of budget would be dependent on the level of finding. She also added that budgeting should cover from 2016 to 2019.
PROCESS
On matters of advocacy, Philomena of Zamani Foundation complained of the inability of women to access the traditional rulers. In response, Joy Onyesoh suggested having men as partners who will stand as the project person while the women stand in as the gender person.
Major considerations for appointing a coordinator:
- No government engaged person can be selected.
- Knowing the state coordinator is key to ensuring a positive drive.
- Those with already existing knowledge should be top on the check list.
- Access to a wide network range
- Ability to gather enough resource
- Knowledge of ICT
- Facilitation skills and ability to fill up the gap when necessary
- Participant should coordinate their states and ensure training are guaranteed and stepped down.
- Refresher course ensured.
- Participants to provide the number of senatorial zones and local governments under each of the senatorial zones.
- State coordinators must have functional email address while local government coordinators must have phone numbers.
- Training will include- ICT, electoral process, conflict sensitivity, peace building, civic education, reporting; with emphasis should be laid on target beneficiary.
- Advocating alongside dialogue
Sola Odeja informed the house that in doing advocacy alongside dialogue it created a functional platform that would disseminate the information as expected
The meeting came to an end with the agreement of the following timeline to ensure implementation and compliance. Oluchi of WILPF Nigeria led the closing prayer.
ORGANISATIONS IN ATTENDANCE
The meeting had eleven (11) persons in attendance;
NAME ORGANIZATION BASE
- Magdalene Igbazua CORAFID Benue
- Doris Onyeneke MOGCI Rivers
- Joy Onyesoh WILPF Enugu
- Bridget Osakwe WANEP NIGERIA Lagos
- Sola Odeja DMESSAGE Lagos
- Zariyalu Abubakar WILDOM CARE FOUNDATION Gombe
- Philomena Henry WILPF/ZAMANI FOUNDATION Kaduna
- Justice Amah Media Enugu
- Onwukwe Ugochukwu WILPF Enugu
- Nnamdi Nwigwe WILPF Enugu
- Eze Oluchi WILPF Enugu
TIMELINE AGREED
Structure 4 weeks – 29th April
Digital/site 2 weeks – 13th April
Mapping May-June 30th
Concept note/budget and reporting template Wed 7th April
Development 7th April-12 April
Advocacy (national) April-June
Advocacy (State) August-September
