E-Government for gender equality in Nigeria: The bane of good governance

Abstract

Good governance is an elusive status to reach for governments mostly in the developing world due to their over towering challenges and limited income. To minimize administrative and political cost of governance while maximizing public output, e-government was developed. If properly implemented, e-government can guarantee good governance through the institutionalization of the basic democratic values of Rule of law, Equity and Inclusiveness. These values cannot be achieved where elements of gender inequality is evident. It is based on this that this paper examined the role of e-government on the reduction of gender inequality in addition to promoting good government and governance in Nigeria. The paper adopted a secondary data from the GGGI-2018 report to authenticate the gender gap in Nigeria. The paper concluded that e-government is increasingly a sine qua non of sound public administration that expands the meaning of good governance, giving governments the wherewithal to reach out to, and promote the rights of women and men alike. E-government can and should be seen as a creative tool to achieve the normative goal of gender equality, in particular, and good governance, in general. However, the paper proposes that during implementation, gender-inclusiveness should be built on the foundation of the infusion of gender perspectives where digital tools guide the interaction between the government and the governed.