Both the government and men in their communities failed them; but these women knew that to survive, they had to band together.

The story was told of how one afternoon in October 2013, a young woman in Gwammaja area of Kano, North-western Nigeria, went into labour. As time went on, it became clear that something was wrong. Those around tried to reach her husband, but he seemed to have vanished. They wanted to take her to the hospital, but they did not know if she could afford the costs or if they could even get there on time.

Running out of options, a child was sent to find Hajiya Gambo. By the time she arrived, the woman had given birth, but the placenta was trapped. Hajiya Gambo, who had received midwife training just a week earlier, helped remove it safely.

It was only two weeks later that the woman’s husband resurfaced. Only close family members knew of his vanishing act. They asked no questions and, in order to protect his reputation, they kept it quiet.

Disappearing men

This was not the first time Hajiya Gambo had been called in to help a woman in labour. Nor was it the first time a pregnant woman’s husband had suddenly gone missing. According to locals, it has become a trend for men to disappear when their wives go into labour. They reportedly do this to avoid having to pay any financial costs associated with childbirth and secure in the belief that their wives will be looked after one way or another.

“When you ask them why they abandon their wives, they say it’s because they don’t have money,” says the Hajiya. “This has been going on for years.”

It was because of this recurring problem that she established the Maraban Alheri Women Development Association in 2007. In the first half of 2020 alone, the organisation supported at least nine women whose husbands disappeared during childbirth.

The association is made up of around 30 members of the community. Most have little education and work as petty traders, henna designers, local perfumers, or tailors. Though their incomes are small, the women contribute an average of N7,000 ($18) each month. When someone in labour needs to go to the hospital, this fund is used to pay the costs. The association’s members have also received some external midwife training for occasions when it is not feasible to take someone to hospital.

For all the women they support, the association records the mother and newborn child’s health status in case it is relevant for future health needs. It is all written down in Hausa.

Important interventions

As well as supporting women in childbirth, Maraban Alheri Women Development Association has also been branching out into more preventative measures. For instance, members sometimes go house to house to educate women and men about family planning. In the past, this has led to some pushback.

“They said things like they don’t understand the process or pills [or that] they don’t trust them”, says Hajiya Gambo of men that have argued against their suggestions. “Then later they said children are a gift from God and shouldn’t be stopped from coming…How can you insist that your wife keep getting pregnant and yet run away when she goes into labour?”

Because of these kinds of responses, the association often advises women to take matters into their own hands.

“Just last week, I witnessed a woman bleed so much during childbirth,” says the Hajiya. “Her husband had run away when she started showing signs of labour…It was her eighth child and I knew that if I did not act fast before her husband resurfaced, we will still be back here in a year or two so I told her I would have the doctor administer a five-year birth control plan for her.”

The woman was hesitant at first but eventually agreed.

Acknowledging the difficulty of influencing men in the community, the association has tried a range of strategies. One has been to persuade local imams to intervene when husbands run away or refuse to do family planning. Hajiya Gambo says the religious leaders usually just ask her to talk to the men instead.

Another has been to run background checks on men before they marry.

“We also encourage women whose daughters are getting married to come to us and let us know who the prospective husband is,” says Memuna Musa, 50, a member of the association. “We then conduct background research into his personhood and make sure that he’s fit to have a wife.”

Members do this by going into the man’s neighbourhood and asking key questions. Does he help his mother around the house? Does he provide financial assistance to his family? Is he kind? Who are his friends? Has he been known to engage in fights? Is he Islamically grounded? What does he do for a living? Has he ever been caught engaging in criminal activities?

Navigating patriarchy and poverty

The Maraban Alheri Women Development Association in Kano is a microcosm of a much bigger phenomenon. That of local women mobilising to support each other in navigating the hazards caused by patriarchy and, often, poverty.

With little institutional recognition or backing, the group has helped multiple women who were abandoned by both their husbands and the larger system. In this environment, the association has become ever more important and has grown in scope over the years. It has even begun providing some women with capital to start small businesses and raised money to support women who fall sick.

The grassroots nature of the association has allowed it to be responsive to its members’ needs in this way, but this also presents a big and ongoing challenge if it is to sustain its work and continue growing.

“It is obvious that these women have the capacity to act with larger impact but they just don’t have the resources,” says community development expert Fakhrriyyah Hashim. “How do we create a link of contact with authorities and these women that ensure they don’t run out of money?”

2 out of 10 deliveries attended by skilled birth attendants in Kano

Meanwhile, research has revealed that only 21.5 per cent – two out of ten deliveries in Kano State are attended by skilled birth attendants.

The research which was conducted by Nigeria Health Watch traversed 49 facilities in 44 local government areas.

Presenting the report, Managing Director of Nigeria Health Watch, Vivianne Ihekweazu, said the percentage of facilities that offer maternal and child health (MNCH) services is very low.

“Results from the Primary Health Care Centres (PHCs) assessed reveal that many seem to lack some component of the basic requirements as outlined by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) minimum standards for PHCs,” said Mrs Ihekweazu.

“However, it is evident that significant effort has been made to improve health services in Kano State, as well as increasing funding to the state’s health budget.”

The director revealed that Kano State is one of the few states allocating over 15 per cent of the state budget to health services.

Mrs Ihekweazu said the results of the monitoring also revealed that there is poor power supply in many of the primary health centres.

According to her, health care services are being performed in facilities with insufficient infrastructure.

“There are appears to be a shortage of staff, especially doctors as results show that almost 90 per cent of the PHCs assessed do not have a doctor. Only 17 primary health centres indicated that a pharmacy technician was posted to their facilities. Only seven facilities indicated that they had an ambulance driver. 35 PHCs said there was no security posted there.

more gender-neutral or gender-specific terms. But it appears that the debate will not end soon because of the ingrained popular cliché: “It is a man’s world”.

The legal profession has many androcentric terms such as “gentlemen; sir; my lord and chairman which are masculine but used for both the male and female genders.

On several occasions, female lawyers and judges are made to affix their status to their names such as “Miss”, “Mrs.” and “Ms.” during introductions in court or in legal documents, while the male lawyers and judges are not required to do so or can use general terms like “Mr.”.https://secureframe.doubleclick.net/container.html?ecs=20201209

Daily Trust has observed that when judicial panels of three males and two females preside over cases, the media downplay the contributions of the females by referring to the team as “five-man panel” rather than “five-member panel”.

A former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, in 2017, cautioned against making females to identify themselves as Miss or Mrs. in court.

According to Justice Onnoghen, the use of the legal title or suffix “Esquire” is sufficient for all lawyers or barristers, adding that it is not mandatory in the rules for female lawyers to state their marital status.

Some lawyers traced the practice of identifying female lawyers and judges with male titles as part of the tradition of the legal profession, which they explained would take a long time to correct.

Nigeria as a member of the Commonwealth of Nations; being a former colonial territory of Britain, derived its legal origins from the English Common Law. The British influence in both procedural and substantive laws in Nigeria can be seen even in the dressing, address and courtesies in court.

A member of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Women Forum, Ozioma Izuora, said there was no consensus among the concerned female members of the legal profession on a change of how they were formally addressed.

Izuora noted that many female judges even felt uncomfortable to be addressed as “Your Worship” or “My Lady” instead of “My Lord”; which is masculine.

She said, “It is not just in the legal profession; it is in the armed forces and the media.”

“We are hoping that with time people can change. But as it is, some women have succumbed to the direction that the poll swings.

“In the NBA, they will tell you that until the constitution is changed, there is no provision for ‘chairperson’; that there is no ‘chairperson’ on the ballot.

“When I was Vice Chairman of NBA, I insisted on being called ‘vice chair’, but when I signed documents, I signed as ‘vice chairman’.”

A law research expert, Chinelo Ogbazo, said the challenge was that there were not enough women in the top echelon as justices of the profession; whether as Justices of the Supreme Court or Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), to push for a change in the narrative.

Ogbazo said, “It is a combination and the tradition of the bar. In fact, they say there are no women in the profession. They will tell you ‘gentlemen in skirt’.

“The idea is that the profession is for stronger people; depicting women as weak. Therefore, if a woman must be in the profession, she is a man.

“So, that is why you see people calling female justices ‘sir’ instead of ‘ma’; or ‘your lordship’ instead of ‘your ladyship’.”

Many gender advocates in other parts of the world see the terms with which female lawyers and judges are addressed with as awkward, sexist, antiquated and discriminatory.

A journalist, Sharmila Bhowmick, in an interview with the Indian Times, said, “Classifying women into Miss/Mrs. is patriarchal. A woman’s life is defined by the various stages of her being possessed by a man. Before possession she is a ‘Miss’, after possession, ‘Mrs’, and if possession falls through, she is ‘Ms’.”

In his reaction, the Director General of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS), Prof. Tawfiq Ladan, said the lack of gender sensitivity in references in the legal profession could be traced to about 100 years tradition of the legal profession inherited from the colonial masters as a male-driven, conservative profession.

However, he said the situation was changing gradually as many female justices in Kenya, South Africa and even those at the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights were now referred to as ‘your ladyship’.

Of the about 120,000 lawyers in Nigeria, there are more males than females.

But Prof .Ladan said this had nothing to do with masculine references to female lawyers and judges, explaining that male dominance was changing rapidly.

He said, “There is no gender disparity or discrimination whatsoever when it comes to enrolment into the Nigerian law faculties or the law school or call to the bar.

“If you meet the criteria, you are admitted. And I can tell you that the older generations of the federal universities that have law faculties such as ABU Zaria, University of Lagos, University of Ibadan and UNN had 55 per cent of females as against 45 per cent in the last 10 years that I know of as Chairman of the NUC Accreditation Panel.

“Twenty five years ago, you could see more males than females, but I can tell you that in the last 10 years, I have seen in the law faculties more females than males.

“With regards to employment; whether on the bench as judges and magistrates, or in private practice, it is about additional qualifications and placements and interviews.”

He further said if there were discriminations forty years ago, the Court of Appeal would not have produced Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa as president for almost nine years, and another female replacement in Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem

He pointed to the meritorious appointment of five female justices in the current Supreme Court and the earlier rise of the first female CJN, Justice Mariam Aloma Mukhtar, in the last 10 years.

He explained that, “The same thing applies to the payroll which is already computed based on particular qualities of salary grade structure which is neutral or blind and doesn’t really focus on gender.

“The same thing applies to the legal academia, in the last 10 years that I know, we have had more females actually joining the academia of the law faculties than the males.

“In the last 10 years, we have had more female Deans of Law as professors than in the last 30 years. Currently, the Dean of Law of UNN, Prof. Joy Ezeilo, is a lady; the Dean of Law, University of Lagos, is a lady, Prof. Ayo Atsenuwa; the former Dean of Law in Lagos, Prof. Chioma Agomoh, is a lady; and the current Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Prof. Carol, is actually from the Law Faculty; the former Dean of Law, University of Ibadan, Prof. Bamgbose, is a lady.”

Dailytrust