Knocking Down the Nigerian House: Getting Youths and Women into Government.
At a moment of historic volatility in American politics, these four women decide to fight back, setting themselves on a journey that will change their lives and country forever. Without political experience or corporate money, they build a movement of insurgent candidates challenging the powerful incumbents in Congress. Their efforts result in a legendary upset — KnockDownTheHouse.com
The words above are those of the producer of the Netflix documentary — Knock Down the House. This movie documents the journey of four amazing women, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Vilela, Cori Bush, and Paula Jean Swearengin, who were working their way up the ballot, on a quest to Washington. In the end, only one of them — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, made it through the primaries and eventually got a seat at the US House of Representatives, earning the title “Baby of the House” being the youngest member of the House at the age of 27.
The full movie was uploaded to YouTube by Netflix and can be found here.
Also in 2018, a group of four colored women, all under the age of 50, dubbed The Squad — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, were sworn in as US Representatives.
2018 marked a historic year for female candidates, with a historic number of women running for office in local, state, and national races. The stories of these women are a perfect description of knocking down the political house of a country. Just so you know, if you never did —
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 27 years old bartender defeated Jim Crowley, an incumbent who has been in the house for 20 years.
- Rashida Tlaib was the first Palestinian and one of the two Muslim women to be elected into congress.
- Ayanna Pressley also defeated an incumbent who has been in the house for 20 years and became the first black woman from Massachusetts to get elected to congress.
- Ilhan is the first Somali-American legislator and one of the first two Muslim women to serve in congress.
- Cori Bush lost her primaries in 2018, but at the 2020 democratic primaries, she defeated an incumbent who has been in the senate for two decades. A sure banker for the US Congress in November 2020.
- Paula Jean Swearengin lost the 2018 democratic primary but received the most primary votes against an incumbent US Senator in West Virginia in 75 years. She has won the 2020 democratic primary and might well be on her way to congress.
- Amy Vilela came into politics after losing her daughter. She contested and lost her 2018 Democratic primary
Knocking the Nigerian House Down
In the case of Nigeria, knocking down the house is simply the booting out of political office the current set of old career politicians and getting the underrepresented — youths and women into power.
The first step to knocking down the house for youths was the signing into law, the Not Too Young to Run Bill by Mr. President. The bill reduces the age requirement to run for political office in Nigeria and allows a person as young as 25 to run for a House of Representative seat. The journey afterward has not been encouraging, with party nomination forms going as high as ₦45 million, essentially defeating the purpose of the bill.
During the 2019 general election in Nigeria, 23,442 candidates contested for various elective posts, out of which 3,032 (12.9%) were women. As for youths, the overall youth candidacy in the election rose to 34.3 percent, while the number of youths that got elected into the National Assembly was 12 (2.6%) out of the total of 469 elected lawmakers. These stats were curated by YIAGA Africa and can be found here, here and here.
Getting more women and youth into politics has been an uphill battle. Running for political office has to do with a lot of mobilizations that require funding. The issue of funding has been and will continue to be a huge problem for youth and women in politics.
To solve this problem, Political Action Committees seem to be a viable solution that has not been fully explored in Nigeria.
Political Action Committee
A political action committee (PAC) is a committee that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. PACs are typically formed to represent business, labor, or ideological interests by individuals who wish to privately raise money to donate to a political campaign. Any group of people can start a Political Action Committee and different PACs can support the same candidates.
PACs are ways to support candidates that will help push bills that will get things done. The women mentioned above, all had the backing of either the Brand New Congress PAC or the Justice Democrats PAC and the basis for the backing was that they agree not to take money from big donors and that they have to support legislation on issues such as — Rebuild the economy through infrastructure and community investment, Establishing paid maternity leave, paid vacation leave, and free childcare, Reform our immigration system with employment verification systems and global legal immigration centers, and many more.
In the Nigerian setting, for example, the members of the tech community can start one to support candidates that agree to support getting legislation on issues such as a bill for reduced tax for SMEs, a bill to ensure government organizations make use of software made by Nigerians, etc. The Nigerians in the diaspora can start one to support candidates that agree to push legislation such as a bill to allow Nigerians abroad to vote etc.
If we are going to get more youths and women into the Nigerian Government in 2023 and beyond, now is the time to start finding the right candidates, and forming these PACs to support them. The first attempt might get just one person into government, however, the numbers in subsequent elections will increase and before we know it, the house is down.
For one of us to make it through, 100 of us have to try — Aleaxandria Ocasio-Cortez
