For the implementation of

the Quota Bill to be demo-

cratically experienced as
a success, the coalition of
Nigerien female parliamen-
tarians and other political
associations must work
outside the patriarchal
secularist framework and
integrate ideological, politi-
cal, and judicial diversity,
which would advance an
equitable gender balance.
Women, Religion, and the Discourses
of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic
Ousseina Alidou and Hassana Alidou

There is an international movement that advocates the estab-

lishment of quotas for women, especially in political and
governmental positions. Partly as a result of its initiatives and
efforts, countries have introduced legislation that endorses its
spirit. These efforts have been important in addressing the
gender gap; however, the means of articulating these legisla-
tive measures and implementing them vary from country to
another. This article focuses on the textual formulation of the
Quota Bill (2001) in Niger and how secularist and Islamist
political elite women responded to it during the debate that
led to its legal adoption.

Introduction

The opening up of political space in Niger Republic since the 1990s has
resulted in many initiatives—in education, politics, and the performing
arts—intended to ensure the effective participation of women, who consti-
tute 50.3 percent of the population, in key governmental and nongovernment
positions that had historically been defined and predominantly mapped as
male spaces and prerogatives (Alidou 2005; Djibo 2001). One of these initia-
tives, the Quota Bill, was proposed in the National Assembly of the Republic
of Niger on 7 June 2000 and signed into law by President Mamadou Tanja
on 28 February 2001, effectively becoming the Quota Act. Examination of
the textual and contextual features of this law constitutes the focus of this
article, which analyzes the interplay of women, religion, and competing
political ideologies.
This legal development toward greater representation of women has
taken place against the backdrop of a society that is constitutionally “secu-
lar” but overwhelmingly Islamic—95 percent Muslim, with the remaining
population being followers of indigenous faiths (4 percent) or Christianity
(1 percent) (Alidou 2005:11). The Nigérien state embraces secularism while
courting—privately or publicly—Islamic religious organizations in addressing
critical sociopolitical and economic national matters (Sounaye 2005).
 Within this political context, the provisions of and the discourse poli-
tics around the Quota Act betray its limitations in scope and effect that arise
from four interrelated factors. First are disparities in the forms and levels of
literacy among those that the document is intended to benefit. Second is how
power relations are determined by a conjuncture of vectors, including access
and patronage of the state, socioeconomic stratification, and religion and
its opposition to secularity. Third is the conflict of legal ideologies, both as
africa today 54(3)

societal perspectives on the nature, roles, and functions of law and its insti-
tutional setups, and as how the law is mobilized in the interest of particular
ideological agendas. Fourth, there is the language of the Quota Act itself.
Using discourse analysis, this article explores how, in response to the
momentum for political pluralism and the forces of patriarchy, the women’s
movements in Niger continue to be challenged by constraints precipitated
by the conjuncture of the above dynamics as implicated specifically in the
22

politics of the Quota Act. The women’s movements in Niger comprised a

diversity of ideological trends, which include competing secularist, religious,
Women, Religion, and the Discourses of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic

professional, and social articulations, all under the umbrella of the Confed-
eration of Women’s Associations of Niger (CONGAFEN). The contestation
between some of these voices, and especially between secularist and dis-
sident Islamist voices, was clearly demonstrated during a women’s meeting
sponsored by female parliamentarians and CONGAFEN to discuss the Quota
Bill that took place on 3–4 March 2002 at Seyni Kountché Stadium. The
discourse(s) arising from this event constitute the primary object of analysis
of this article. What emerges from this analysis is that in “politics” there
are no permanent allies: positions and alliances shift on the basis of political
interests, and because of the history of women’s marginalization from public
political leadership, women are more susceptible to political relocation in
the male-dominated network of political allegiances.

The Quota Act: A Background

The fundamental provisions of the new act—in full consideration of the con-
stitution of the country; the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
the 1952 Convention on Civic Women’s Rights; the 1979 convention on the
elimination of all forms of discrimination against women; and other relevant
ordinances of the state—are to maintain:

(a) A minimum of 10 percent of candidates of one and the other

sex in all electoral positions; and

(b) A minimum of 25 percent of appointees of one and the

other sex in executive government and state positions and
promotions.
Provision (a) pertains to party candidates selected to run for local and national
seats, and to the proportion of the final list of individuals elected to hold the
local and national seats. Though the language of the act accommodates both
sexes, the act is in fact intended to promote greater representation of women
in processes and institutions that have hitherto been dominated by men.
It is significant that the law is seen to be a temporary measure, even
though its duration of application is not specified. The understanding ema-

africa today 54(3)

nating from it is that after an unspecified number of years of the quota
system, women will have caught up sufficiently to make the law no longer
necessary. Once that threshold is attained, one presumes that the law would
be revised or dropped altogether. While it is in effect, however, several ques-
tions arise: what are its implications for women? how does it relate to the
prevailing provisions of the national constitution regarding the question of
parity between the sexes? and how is it to be implemented in the real space

23
of “practical” politics of power, contestation, and control?

Ousseina Alidou and Hassana Alidou

The Women’s Congress on the Quota Bill

These considerations led the Confederation of Women’s Associations of

Niger (CONGAFEN) and the Association of Women Parliamentarians to
organize a two-day conference to deliberate on such issues as strategies of
popularization and implementation and measures for ensuring accountabil-
ity in the process. Numerous fora to discuss issues of representation in the
national electoral process had already occurred, but the women’s agenda had
repeatedly been sidelined. The conference, therefore, was the first meeting of
a wide cross-section of elite women organized by women themselves in the
capital city, Niamey, devoted exclusively to the Quota Bill. This gathering
represents another important milestone in the history of women’s agency
in Niger’s political process.
The conference included current and past female parliamentarians and
representatives from the Association of Nigerien Women (AFN), the Demo-
cratic Assembly of Nigerien Women (RDFN), and other women’s associa-
tions. Other delegates included officers of the government and sponsoring
and interested nongovernmental organizations (local and international),
some of whom were men. A few individuals were invited to participate in
their own right: these included the authors of this article.
What clearly emerged from the composition of the conference was
its Francophile class and urban nature. Virtually all the delegates were
from the mainstream secular French-educated middle and upper classes
and were based in Niamey. Women who are not literate or competent in
French from grassroot-based associations within the city were grossly under-
represented, and those from rural areas were totally absent. There were no
representatives from associations of market women, cooked-food traders,
or domestic servants. This demographic profile of the conference vindicates
Mahmood Mamdani, who maintains that the emergent civil society in Africa
 is primarily urban as a direct result of the continuing legacy of colonial
administrative and political structures (1996:16–23).
Chaired by the Minister of Social Services and Women’s Affairs, the
conference largely supported the new act and its provisions: it was seen as
a move in the right direction—toward the empowerment of women in the
political and administrative spheres. Nonetheless, there was a split of opin-
ion in at least three directions. First, the majority of participants endorsed
africa today 54(3)

the act as formulated, and saw no need for extending its spirit—the more
general empowerment of women—beyond the political and the administra-
tive realms. Many of the female participants were themselves vested in the
legislative assembly by holding elected offices or intending to vie for office
in the future. The provision seemed created for them, to ensure that they
would continue to have a place within the established structures, even if the
mode of operation of those structures remained essentially patriarchal, and
24

it was their preference that the act be restricted to its provisions without
reference to other broader issues, such as the economic and social rights of
Women, Religion, and the Discourses of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic

women in the society at large.

It was obvious from the discourse of this group of women that they
regarded their voice as the authoritative one, and the seeming participa-
tory framework of the congress was merely intended to validate a precon-
ceived agenda that was in line with the neoliberal interests of the interna-
tional agencies sponsoring the event. Similar use of interactive legal reform
forums by those in power in the name of development and their political
shortcomings is explored by Hirsch (2002) in the context of Tanzania.
Second, a small and diffuse, but strong and persuasive minority, mainly
from the professional middle class, also supported the act, but saw the act
as just one level of the struggle for the empowerment of women. Of equal
or greater concern to them was the need to tie the act to the more general
constitutional provision for parity between the sexes. It was important to
them that the campaign to popularize the act be pegged to projects about the
broader agenda of parity and empowerment at all levels of society.
Finally, there was a voice representative of Islamist women in general.
Only one Islamist woman1 articulated a response to the document. She
argued that the entire political setup of Niger’s society was itself contrary
to Islam, and that, in any case, there cannot be parity or equality between
the sexes, and that women should not vie for positions of public political
leadership at all.

Contending with Nigerian Islamist Voice

The unexpected solo voice of the self-identified Islamist woman triggered

an instant rise of emotions among the conference attendees. Those who did
not welcome her ideas requested the dismissal of her argument altogether
because they believed it would not advance women’s interests. Others
questioned the “brand” of Islam to which she belonged. They tried to dele-
gitimize her authority by impugning her Islamic credentials, including her
knowledge of Islamic doctrines, her linguistic competence in Arabic, and her
awareness of historical and contemporary Muslim women who have served
as political leaders in Pakistan, Indonesia, and other Muslim societies.
In essence, the secularist women were presenting a counterargument
to Islamist’s views, conveniently using Islam to bolster their position.
Their views echoed those of Mrs. Fatima L. Adamu (1998), a Muslim soci-
ologist, presented during a similar debate on Nigerian Muslim women and

africa today 54(3)

participation in politics. She contended that:

in Islam, politics is a means to serve Allah, the creator of the

universe, but not a means to acquire wealth, power or posi-
tion in the society. In the Holy Qur’an Allah says “Let there
arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good,
Enjoining what is right, And forbidding what is wrong: They

25
are the ones to attain felicity” (Chapter 3, verse 104). In one
of his sayings Prophet Muhammad . . . said “Whoever of you

Ousseina Alidou and Hassana Alidou

sees something wrong must seek to rectify it by action or
deed; if he/she cannot, let him/her try to change it by words;
if she/he cannot, let her/his feelings of disapproval and con-
demnation intensify, and this is the minimal degree of faith.”
So the whole essence of politics in Islam is to enjoin what is
good and forbid what is bad. Thus, a Muslim who engages in
politics is not only accountable to his/her constituency, but
more importantly to his/her creator. As a representative of
Allah on earth, a Muslim will account to Allah his/her role
in fighting injustices, bribery and corruption, extravagances
and all other vices that engulf our country. He/she shall also
account on the quality of his/her governance in terms of the
quality of the life of the governed and the management of the
resources of the society.

According to this reading of Islamic doctrine, then, women are not only free
to participate in politics, but are actually required to do so as part of the
religious obligation of all Muslims to “enjoin what is right” in the society
as a whole.
The seminal contributions of Fatima Mernissi, the Morrocan sociolo-
gist of Islam, demonstrate that the historical reality of Islam contradicts
the ideological myth of the illegitimacy of Muslim women to be active in
contemporary politics. The Forgotten Queens of Islam (1993) and Women’s
Rebellion and Islamic Memory (1996) are two of her writings that provide
historical records of female Muslim public political leaders—including head
of states and armies—as part of the historical legacy of Islam.
At this point, it was clear that the forum was designed to channel
participants’ discourse toward terms of reference that further empowered
the French-educated elite women. The Islamist representative responded
that she was not an Islamist scholar, but an Islamist who believed in the
 Islamist position she advanced. She acknowledged that she could not speak
Arabic, but she reminded the audience that a great number of Nigerien male
and female Islamist leaders whom she respects are Arabists, competent in
Arabic and Islamic doctrines, even if she herself is not. She turned the rhe-
torical question to her inquisitors, asking them to apply the same standard
to themselves with regard to French. How many Nigériens—especially
women—understand the French phrasing of state laws that impact on their
africa today 54(3)

lives? This challenge met with silence, until a voice responded: “You need
to look into the various interpretations of Islam and not just agree to be a
pawn of Islamist males.” To this, she replied:

I stand as an Islamist woman, and we do not support Muslim

women’s participation in politics. Throughout the morning
discussion, all of you did not mention religion—Islam—except
26

when we began to tackle the issue of where men would oppose

some of the proposals you are advancing. This is a reminder
Women, Religion, and the Discourses of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic

of our Muslimness and how Islam impacts on our lives in

this country, whether we want to consider it now or not. We
don’t dissociate social practice and community leadership
from Islamic considerations. Why should we disregard reli-
gion when the frameworks most of you are talking about are
European-Christian derived? (Translation of an audio-recorded
text, 4 March 2002)

In the heat of the debate triggered by the Islamist woman, the conversation,
facilitated by a male sociologist (recruited by the NGO that funded the
conference), was transformed into a trilingual one—in Hausa, Zarma, and
French, with Hausa and Zarma increasingly taking prominence. The Islamist
woman’s provocation set off a shift from French to the languages associated
with emotive spontaneity, intimacy, and soul-searching.
Within the postcolonial dispensation, the national linguistic setting
has been one of diglossia, with French solely privileged as the medium of offi-
cial secular communication (as in administration, education, the judiciary,
and conferences), Arabic as the language of the mosque, Islamic rituals, and
international relations with the Arab-Islamic World, and at least in Niamey,
the capital city, Hausa and Zarma as the media of transethnic transactions
in other social situations. This is an ideal division of the function of the
different languages, but in reality, the paradigm is constantly upset in day-
to-day interactions, partly because those who have command of French are
still a tiny minority in the nation, and languages such as Hausa and Zarma
have wider currency, even in official settings. By the abrupt code-switching
to Hausa and Zarma in the official setting of the conference, therefore, the
diglossic privilege of French and the elitist status defined by that linguistic
privilege was suddenly challenged. What started as an ideological difference
came to assume a linguistic articulation. The entire argument and coun-
terargument about competence in Arabic language suggests the growing
recognition of Arabic in reading the location and role of Islam in defining
the cultural and political identity of the nation.

A Single Islamist Voice in Secularist Territory

The Islamist position instantly provided a mirror to the exclusionary secular-

africa today 54(3)

ist elite, whose record from the independence era to the present has failed
to advance women’s representation in political leadership. Hadiza Djibo’s
study of women’s participation in politics in countries like Niger at a time
when Islamism was contained by governments is instructive (Djibo 2001).
A close reading of her analysis reveals that policies and practices that have
historically excluded women from political leadership have not been the
preserve of Islamist patriarchy: they have existed under regimes with no

27
Islamist inclination.
The failure of secularist politics to foster gender equity is well reflected

Ousseina Alidou and Hassana Alidou

in a table recording the history of Nigerien women’s holding representative
seats in the government from independence to 1999.
But the record of women in parliamentary seats during the republic’s
so-called transition to a democratic system of governance is even more
dismal, as the table below indicates.
Although it is not framed as an appraisal of republican secularism and
its relationship to women, one is naturally led to ask: is secularism more
beneficial to women than the emerging Islamisms in Niger? or are they two
sides of the same coin? The evidence provided by Hamani (2000) and Djibo
(2001) clearly support the latter. Both studies remind us that the failure of
the successive secular republican governments to appoint Nigerien women
to ministerial positions must not be viewed as a consequence of any compla-
cency on the part of the women: on the contrary, Nigérien women across the
ideological spectrum played critical roles in the struggle for independence
and for democracy during the postcolonial era. Cooper (1995), for example,
highlights the historical dynamism of women’s political activism and leader-
ship in the predominantly Hausa-speaking region of Maradi. Thus, it seems
sensible to argue that given the Nigérien women’s political experiences,
Nigerien secularism and Islamism are offspring of a hegemonic patriarchal
system and/or ideologies, calling for a more critical vigilance of women’s
coalition within both paradigms.
The tendency of secularist and Islamist patriarchies to form an alliance
against the advancement of women in society was manifested during the
national debate over the adoption of the reformed family-law document com-
monly known as Code de la Famille. This document was intended to promote
greater gender equity, especially regarding inheritances, and to provide more
space for legal fairness for women to address their rights in cases such as
divorce and child custody; however, many men, both secularist and Islamist,
formed a unified bloc against the code, and derisively nicknamed it “le Code
de la Femme” (woman’s code) (Dunbar 1991; Reynolds 1997; Villálon 1994).
 Table 1.
Women Members of Government from 1957 to 1999
Total Number
Number
Political Regime of Members of Ratio (%)
of Women
Government

4 April 1957–27 September 1958

africa today 54(3)

22 0 0.0
Niger: Oversea Territory
28 September 1958–2 August 1960
26 0 0.0
Niger: Member of French Union

3 August 1960–14 April 1974:

99 0 0.0
Niger: 1st Republic

15 April 1974–23 September 1989

28

377 1 0.2
Niger: Regime of Exclusion
Women, Religion, and the Discourses of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic

24 September 1989–28 July 1991

51 2 3.9
Niger: 2nd Republic

29 July1991–15 April 1993

63 2 3.7
Niger: Democratic transition

16 April 1993–20 February 1995

70 6 8.5
Niger: 3rd Republic

21 February 1995–26 January 1996

16 2 12.5
Niger: Cohabitation

27 January 1996–7 August 1996

76 5 6.6
Niger: Conseil du Salut National

8 August 1996–8 April 1999

96 5 5.2
Niger: 4th Republic
9 April 1999–21 December 1999
Niger: Transition Council for 23 2 8.7
National Reconciliation
Source: Hamani 2000 p. 58

Between the Quota Act and Legal Ideology

The voice of one Islamist succeeded in inscribing an important item in the

conference agenda: the clash between secularist legal ideology and Islamist
legal ideology. The Islamist regarded the secularist position to be an intru-
sion of European colonial origins, one that continues to be perpetuated by
the hegemonic West, which seeks to homogenize the world culturally, politi-
cally, and economically through forces of globalization. The Islamist reading
of the secularist trajectory is perhaps consistent with Francis Fukuyama’s
thesis:
 Table 2.
Representation of women in parliament
Total Number
Number
Political Regime of Members of Ratio (%)
of Women
Government
1993 legislative elections 83 5 6.8

africa today 54(3)

1999 legislative elections 83 1 1.2
Hamani 2000 p.79

The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of

all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to
western liberalism. In the past decade, there has been unmis-

29
takable change in the intellectual climate of the world’s two
largest communist countries, and the beginning of significant

Ousseina Alidou and Hassana Alidou

reform movements in both. But this phenomenon extends
beyond high politics, and it can be seen also in the ineluc-
table spread of consumerist Western culture in such diverse
contexts as the peasant markets and color television sets now
omnipresent throughout China. (Fukuyama 1989:5–6)

The only difference between Fukuyama and the Islamist woman’s position
is that the former considers this global condition as the end of history, while
the latter regards it as a locus of struggle between Western value systems and
those rooted in African (Islamic) traditions.
It is equally significant that the Islamists regarded secularism as an
ideology that was very much a product of the history of Christendom in
Europe—that what is paraded as secularism in Niger and other parts of
Africa is essentially a Euro-Christian-centric disposition institutionalized in
politics and administration, education, economy, and so forth. Whether or
not one agrees with the Islamist position, secularism in Niger, as in much
of the rest of Africa, cannot be understood outside the confines of the his-
tory of colonial and neocolonial domination that dismissed all non-Euro-
Christian articulations of faith. If, then, secularism in Europe was once used
to promote tolerance among groups and to check feudal despotism, as Nikki
Keddie (1997:36) has argued, in the African colonies it served to divide the
local people between a minute Western-educated elite and an uneducated
majority so as to further the ends of colonialism and neocolonialism. The
impact of the new division fostered by this history of “unchecked” secular-
ism in the postcolonial dispensation has been greatest among the women
who have benefited the least from the colonial legacy.
This political concern of Islamists is tied to the wider debate, of
whether or not Niger should become an Islamic state constitutionally.
This debate goes back to the mid-1990s, when the multiparty movement
was in full swing and allowed for different voices, including those that
 favored having Islamic law (Shari’a) debated on the national agenda (Sounaye
2005:20). As would be expected, this stand triggered a strong counterreaction
from secular Muslims and the Christian minority. The Christian position
was eventually articulated in the statement “Débat sur la laicité au Niger:
Les Réactions de l’Église” (“Debate on Secularism in Niger: The Reaction
of the Church”), which appeared in the Nigerien daily Le Démocrate, of 28
September 1992, essentially advocating the maintenance of a constitution-
africa today 54(3)

ally secular state. The position does not equate secularism with Christian
values: rather, it sees secularism as a way of forging a modern system of
governance, even if derived from a European colonial legacy.
The other side of the conflict of legal ideology emanating from the
Quota Act has to do with the disjunction between constitutional provisions
and actual practices of political parties. The constitutions of all political par-
ties in Niger require that the final candidates be elected through some kind
30

of balloting by party members. The party constitutions, therefore, are in line

with the Western liberal democratic tradition, more or less.
Women, Religion, and the Discourses of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic

In practice, however, parties tend to select their candidates on the

basis of consensus. Names are submitted to the political bureau of the party,
which selects the final candidate to represent the party in local or national
constituencies on the basis of its impressions of who enjoys the support
of the greatest proportion of party members. Niger being a predominantly
Muslim society, it is possible that this practice of nominating candidates
is itself predicated on the Islamic notion of shuraa (shawara in Hausa
language), a decisionmaking system based on consultation and consensus.
During shawara, select community leaders come together and debate an
issue for as long as necessary until they reach a consensus. When such a
group is dominated by men, as in party politics in Niger, the result is further
continuation of the marginalization and exclusion of women.
This clash of legal ideologies notwithstanding, the political reality in
Niger is that political and governmental appointments are ultimately deter-
mined by political patronage and monetary power. This fact has been well
documented in newspaper reports since the opening up of the political space
and the proliferation of independent media from the early 1990s. It is part
of the wider process referred to in African political science as patron–client
networking (Thomson 2000:99–120). It is a common view, also manifest
in newspaper reports, that some local and international nongovernmen-
tal organizations that on the surface keep advocating for greater rights of
women have themselves been trapped in this system of patronage, with
all its attendant corruption—and both patronage and power have tended
to favor men and the consolidation of patriarchy and to disfavor women’s
rights and welfare.
The Quota Act and the Problem of Women’s Literacy

One of the most critical foundations of democracy and the rule of law is the
accountability of the process. In a democratic order, the people themselves
are among the potential guardians of that accountability; but if the people
are to be effective defenders of the rule of law, they need to be well informed.
An uninformed public is unlikely to be sufficiently prepared to nourish the

africa today 54(3)

tree of constitutionality. If the people know too little about the letter and the
substance of the law and the constitution, they cannot be active contributors
to the promotion of the legal order and its reform.
To promote public awareness of legal and other rights of the citizenry,
one means that has come to be used widely throughout Africa, since the
rise of the democratic reform movement, has been the written word, but
we can quickly appreciate the inherent problems in a strategy that relies on

31
a skill—literacy in French and legalese—in a country like Niger, in which
only 29 percent of nationals are literate in French. Women constitute 15

Ousseina Alidou and Hassana Alidou

percent of the French-literate population. Most female voters cannot read
and analyze by themselves the act as currently worded, no matter how wide
its circulation may be.
In realization of this limitation, there have been genuine efforts to
render this and other important legal articles that affect the lives of women
in abridged format in such local languages as Hausa and Zarma-Songhay,
written in the Roman script. The contribution of organizations such as
Démocratie 2000, a publishing nongovernmental organization sponsored by
the Swiss and German Gesellchaft Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), in
supporting the work of translation and publishing fundamental legislative
documents in Nigerien local languages is commendable; but, again, because
the Roman script is acquired primarily in schools and, to a lesser extent, in
formal adult literacy programs (which are predominantly confined to urban
spaces), its demographic reach remains relatively limited. No efforts were
made, to our knowledge, to popularize the Quota Act in local languages in
particular and in audiovisual media.

Between Roman and Ajami Literacies

More recently, there has emerged a cultural-cum-religious movement seek-

ing to reroot the society in a (re)constructed Islamic tradition, based on the
study of religion through ajami (a localized version of the Arabic script)
and French. In reference to Kilani (1998:16), Sounaye rightly points out
that schools and the state are “sites of production of norms towards which
the new [Islamist] elite direct their discourse” (2005:510). Of particular
significance in this development has been the place of women, who, taking
advantage of the new political space engendered by the democratization
momentum, have taken a keen interest in Islamic education, and have been
positioning themselves as authorities in Islam in their own right (Alidou
 2005; Hadari 2002). In the process, they are contributing to the consolida-
tion of Arabic-based literacies as an alternative to the monopoly of French-
based literacy. These alternative literacies have in turn permitted women to
produce new terms of discourses, using religion to frame and inscribe their
interests in the national politics of Niger.
These emergent spaces that use Islam now provide additional opportu-
nities to reach a wider constituency of women with messages of their rights
africa today 54(3)

and freedoms in law. These forums acquire additional significance when we

consider that the women themselves who participate in them tend to regard
them as openings for the acquisition of “literacy skills” that would help
them to inscribe Muslim women’s voices in charting the nation’s future.
Muslim women’s associations such as Jamayat Nassirat Dine regularly use
mosques, community halls, the internet, and their magazines to reach out to
their constituencies, using the alternative literacies rooted in Islam (Hadari
32

2005; Robinson 2005).

The problem that is likely to confront any secularist attempts to use
Women, Religion, and the Discourses of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic

these community schools to popularize the law of the land to women is again
related to the clash of ideologies. For some conservative Islamists, the epis-
temological logic of these Islamic schools of counterliteracies is, to a large
extent, Islamism against secularism: they see the schools as guardians and
transmitters of an Islamic tradition that stands in opposition to the “rot” and
“excesses” of secularism. The challenge here, then, would be how, through
a process of “mediatory” interpretation or translation, to recast secular laws
in a way that would not be in conflict with the legal ideology with which
female Islamist learners operate.
When all is said and done, the medium that remains most effective,
with a functional scope that stretches to the rural areas also, is undoubtedly
oral, but it too is intimately married to local traditions, to indigenous laws
and ways of viewing the world that affect local conceptions of the meanings,
functions, and administration of the law. Once again, therefore, a process
of cultural and epistemological mediation may be necessary in cultivating
maximum effect in awareness campaigns of the relevant aspects of the law.

The Problematics of the Quota Act: A Discourse Analysis

As indicated earlier, though phrased in a language that is gender-neutral, the

act is essentially intended to increase the representation of women in elected
and appointed offices. Its language betrays a delicate balancing act between
this piece of legislation and the constitution of the country. A quota act
“favoring a particular gender or group” seems to be regarded as standing in
contravention of the constitutional provision against discrimination on the
ground of sex. Nigerien legislators, in their phrasing of the act, seem to have
struggled to avoid precisely this seeming violation of a constitutional provi-
sion, yet in describing the law as a quota law, they clearly betray their mis-
sion of trying to achieve greater representation of women—a constituency
that has been terribly underrepresented, despite the fact that its members
constitute more than fifty percent of the national population.
As a result of this concern, and despite the fact that the act itself
is called Quota Act, its language seeks to imply greater parity in its gen-
eral application so as to suggest that it applies equally to men as it does
to women. The provision relating to a ten-percent minimum for elected
offices, for example, is not phrased in a way that applies to women alone:

africa today 54(3)

rather, it applies to either of the two sexes that is underrepresented and/or
disadvantaged.
By trying to be too sensitive to the nondiscriminatory provision of
the constitution, and instead of amending the constitution, the Quota Act
has created a problem of implementation that seems to encourage electoral
rigging. Through consensual nomination, political parties may have a more
or less equal number of female and male candidates running for local and

33
national offices, but who is to decide how the electorate will vote? The
Quota Act will be in crisis if, for example, the people voted for an over-

Ousseina Alidou and Hassana Alidou

whelming female legislature, with a proportion of male representatives
that amounts to less than 10 percent, unless the government’s electoral
commission tampers with the results!
In the 2004 legislative election in Niger, fourteen seats—about 12.4
percent—went to women. This result may or may not have come directly
from the quota provision. After all, the democratization momentum in
Africa in favor of pluralism has generally led to greater representation of
many social groups, but even if these electoral results were stimulated by
the quota provision, the language of the act leaves room for an electoral
crisis if voters’ choices result in less than 10 percent of elected members
of one sex or the other. This problem needs not to arise with government
appointments that require at least 25-percent representation of the under-
represented sex. In this case, there is no will or choice of the people that is
in danger of being violated.
The question arises as to whether “affirmative action” can be applied
to electoral positions without, in some instances, violating the democratic
process itself—but if the issue of adequate gender representation in local and
national legislative assemblies is important to African countries, should they
not be experimenting with more limited versions of electoral democracy (as
a legacy of the West) that draw from indigenous and Islamic legal ideologies
already manifest in the political landscape? Some creative legal engineering
is definitely in order here.
On the surface, the Quota Act as currently framed may appear to be
simply a question of inadequate phrasing, but it is not: it is symptomatic of
the hegemony of the French-educated elite, which has been converted to the
idea that the only path to democracy in Niger is, in fact, the one inherited
from European colonialism, and the only rule of law that is “proper” is the
one predicated on the French colonial legacy. As a result, there is little cre-
ative thinking about possible alternatives, even when the inherited system is
seen by many to be on the verge of collapse. This perceived failure, in Niger,
 of the postcolonial system may be a cause of the rise of an Islamist order
“provocatively” calling for the institutionalization of Shari’a. Two systems
of law, two legal ideologies, are now in contest in the arena of power politics
in Niger Republic.

Conclusion
africa today 54(3)

This article took the Quota Act as the starting-point for exploring the
interplay among women, religion, and legal ideology in Niger Republic.
While secularist women see the women’s agenda in terms of a French-
inherited system of law, Islamist women are trying to link it to a return to
Islamic fundamentals; however, the Islamist claim to “de-Westernize” or
“de-Christianize” through a return to an “authentic Islamic” cultural legal
34

praxis is quite problematic, given the history of the pervading hegemonic

patriarchal interpretations and control of Islam in the nation. So, for Nigerien
Women, Religion, and the Discourses of Legal Ideology in Niger Republic

women, the struggle for gender equity and justice as legally constituted is
yet to develop a unified voice. The dispute between secularism and Islamism
among women has definitely been at the expense of the disenfranchised
nonelite and nonurban sections of the womenfolk and certainly at the total
exclusion of women who strictly adhere to the indigenous African religions,
which are neither Islamic nor Christian.
The impact of a single oppositional woman’s voice during the confer-
ence on the Quota Act challenged the secular elite political women to reflect
on their own assumption that they represent the voices and political aspira-
tions of Nigerian women at large. For better or for worse, the democratiza-
tion process of the 1990s onward triggered a type of pluralism that operates
through networks that manipulate identity-markers such as ethnicity, reli-
gion, and regionalism to advance and protect vested interests and partisan
politics. Muslim women disillusioned by the potential of secularism to
advance their cause have opted to be agents of patriarchal Islamist politics,
in the same manner that some women support patriarchal secularism; but
affiliations to networks in partisan politics and other fields are not static:
they are constantly reconstructed to achieve the maximum gain, and the
democratization process must adjust itself to this dynamic.

Notes

1. Though most of the female participants’ identification as members of given political affiliations
was taken as self-evident, given that they were more or less established public figures, this
was not the case for the Islamist woman: she self-identified through Islamist body politics,
but her persona was ambiguous for an audience that stereotypically constructed a semiotic
frame of identification of “the Islamist woman” with the new head veiling (hijab) and the black
jallabiya, similar to the dress code of Muslim women from Iran, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia
 (Alidou 2005:149–171). Clearly, the representative attire of the Islamist woman did not match
the stereotypical image that secularist (Muslim) women had constructed. She was dressed
entirely in white, in a traditional Nigerien Muslim women’s style (the style of a great number of
the participants), yet seen as “the other”; the color of her attire invoked a subtle ambiguity in
color symbolism in Nigerien religious culture, for white evokes spiritual cleansing for Muslims
as well as adherents of traditional religions, Bori (in Hausa) and Folley (in Zarma), in rituals of
mourning the dead and celebrating new life. Thus, through dress–code semiotics, the Islamist

africa today 54(3)

woman debunked the secularist stereotypical “othering” of Islamist women.

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