Nasarawa has been governed as if half its people were an audience. The Allied Peoples Movement is done with that. Its ticket is Senator Mohammed Ogoshi Onawo for governor and Dangana for deputy: a man with the record, and a woman with a seat at the top of the ticket.
The All Progressives Congress is offering Senator Ahmed Aliyu Wadada and Honourable Emmanuel Michael Ombugadu — two men, chosen by men, announced by a man, for a state whose women have carried every election and been left outside the photograph.
Look at how APC built its pair. Wadada did not come from a demand for a new Nasarawa. He came from Governor Abdullahi Sule’s succession plan, confirmed at the 22 May primary with 195,285 votes. The deputy was settled at the Governor’s Lodge in Abuja, where Sule named Ombugadu of Nasarawa Eggon after the party had already shared the North: Senate towards Akwanga, the House towards Wamba, deputy to Eggon. Wadada took the West. Nasarawa South got nothing at the top. Women got nothing at all. Zoning, in APC’s mouth, meant which men would rotate the offices. Gender was not on the paper.
APM wrote a different ticket. When Engr. Mohammed Auwal stepped aside, delegates from all 13 local governments affirmed Onawo in Lafia. Former Speaker of the Nasarawa State House of Assembly. Two terms in the House of Representatives.
Senator for Nasarawa South. He has held the gavel at home and the mandate in Abuja. Beside him is Dangana. She is not a decoration on a poster. She is the deputy, the woman on the ticket, the proof that APM’s idea of balance is not only South and the rest of the state, but women and men in the same government. Onawo brings the legislative years. Dangana brings the gender equation APC refused to attempt. A ticket that cannot see women cannot claim to represent Nasarawa.
This is the call. Nasarawa’s women are not a voting bloc to be visited in the last week with wrappers and promises. They are traders, farmers, teachers, civil servants, mothers of the boys on the unsafe roads, and party agents who have delivered wards while the nominations went elsewhere.
APC has shown them what representation looks like in the ruling party: Wadada and Ombugadu, a male pair from a male meeting. APM has put one of their own on the ticket. Women should identify with their kind. Dangana is standing where women have been told to clap from the side. A vote for Onawo and Dangana is a vote to put a woman in Government House, not in the reserved row.
The programme follows the pairing. Security, so the market road is safe for the woman who travels it. Schools, so the girl is not the first child withdrawn. Health, agriculture, jobs — the daily economy women already run, finally treated as policy. Onawo has named those priorities. Dangana is there to see they are not negotiated away after the election.
The same failure sits in Abuja. APC wants Bola Ahmed Tinubu returned on a Muslim-Muslim ticket that already narrowed who belongs at the centre, with no woman on it. APM’s national offer is Engr. Seyi Makinde and Lawal Musa Daura — performance and security — and in Nasarawa the party has done what the ruling party would not: put a woman on the governorship ticket.
Nasarawa does not owe Sule’s men another term. It owes its women a deputy who is one of them, and a governor who chose that balance. That ticket is Onawo and Dangana. That party is APM. Women of Nasarawa, identify with your own. She is on the ballot.
-Daily Buzzwire
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