Women have never held more than nine of the 109 Senate seats
The number of women in the Senate and the House of Representatives in each National Assembly since 1999.
The National Assembly has 469 seats: 109 in the Senate and 360 in the House of Representatives. Since 1999, women have never held more than nine Senate seats or 26 House seats at the same time. In the current, 10th Assembly, there are four women in the Senate and about 15 in the House.
Source: Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Women in elective office in Nigeria, July 2018, Tables 4 and 6 (1999 to 2015); Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Parline (2019 and 2023). Counts change during a term with reruns, court rulings and deaths, and sources differ. The 2019 figures are IPU counts for December 2019 (Senate) and January 2020 (House); the 2023 figures are IPU counts for January 2025, after the Court of Appeal returned a fourth woman to the Senate in October 2023.
Show the figures
| Assembly | Senate | House of Representatives |
|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 3 | 12 |
| 2003 | 4 | 21 |
| 2007 | 9 | 25 |
| 2011 | 7 | 26 |
| 2015 | 7 | 22 |
| 2019 | 8 | 13 |
| 2023 | 4 | 15 |
At its highest, in the Assembly elected in 2007, women held 34 of the 469 seats, about 7 percent. The House figure for the current Assembly varies by source between 15 and 17, depending on the date of the count.