by Alexander O. Onukwue

Let’s face it, everybody is looking for reasons to give women less roles in the public life.

As much we want to see society advance and push forward the topics of equality amongst genders and greater opportunities for women in Governance, there will always be groups who argue against it.

Alison-Madueke, who has been hunted for corruption and money laundering by local and foreign anti-graft agencies, was one of a historic number of women in the cabinet of former President Goodluck Jonathan. For five years and against the will of many others in the Jonathan camp, she held sway over the nation’s economic wheel, dishing out contracts according to her pleasing. Her “performance” and firm grip of the role earned both the envy of many and the admiration of the international community, leading up to her role in OPEC.

The former Petroleum Minister arguable wielded more power in the Jonathan Government than the then President himself. If she did not make any decisions relating to the administration and management of the Oil industries, it was probably because she did not need to.

Such powers, it would now seem, were not supposed to be given to her, following the monumental allegations of millions of dollars that are leveled against her. With the nation’s treasury source at her disposition, she, as it were, stationed an outlet in her foreign investments where the good seemed to pour out, at the expense of the Nigerian people.

She may not have held an elected office like former Speaker of the House, Honourable Patricia Etteh, but Alison-Madueke is probably the woman to have wielded the most power in Nigeria’s politics at least in the democratic era. The similarity in the bearing tags of corruption and financial malpractice between the two would seem to be an argument against granting very high authority to women.

An argument against that would be that Alison-Madueke was, in fact, not the “strongest” woman in the Jonathan administration, given the role of ‘Coordinating Minister’ played by the veteran Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The highly respected former Vice President of the World Bank, while with her own army of detractors, somehow managed to gain the acclaim of persons on both sides of the partisan divide, though we remember she apparently refused to admit that the country, in the terminal days of the Jonathan administration, was drifting into a state of being broke.

Beside Okonjo-Iweala, the former Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Arunma Oteh, also faced the whip of scrutiny in her running of the securities body. But she is not involved in any anti-corruption queries, now serving as a Vice President of the World Back. There is also the former Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed, whose credibility from her MDGs days has seen her rise to the position of the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations.

It would therefore be unconscionable to ask if there’s any motivation to increase the opportunities for women to offer meritorious public service because of the present travails of Alison-Madueke.

If the ratio of accused to serving public officials appears to be higher for women than men, it would not necessarily amount to a confirmation that women should not be given more public opportunities.

Editor