Gender, Power and Political Leadership in Nigeria: Lessons from Selected Plays of Tess Onwueme

Abstract

The gender problematic is profoundly central to the leadership debate and one of the main elements of positive leadership in gender  studies is that of significant inclusion of  all gender types especially women in political contests. Unfortunately because of their lack of needed skills that can ensure a high degree of competitiveness, only a few women have ventured into mainstream political leadership in Nigeria. Their impact in reconstructing the political system is thus quite negligible in an environment that is dominantly patriarchal. Tess Onwueme has interrogated these thematic issues quite succinctly in some of her works that are treated in this study. Increasingly today, the desire for power and leadership within the existing power structure has made women venture more into politics. It is the contention of this paper that gender and political power contests need to be extricated from situations that entrench sexism in leadership aspirations and more fundamentally that for societal transformation to be achieved; there is the need to make a distinction between the sexual and the material reality of socio-economic conditions of production in Nigeria.