Kadaria Ahmed’s Double Minority enters a terrain that is familiar but unsettled: the marginal presence of women in Nigerian politics. Produced in the aftermath of Nigeria’s 2023 general elections, the documentary follows women politicians, aspirants, party members, and political actors reflecting on their experiences of electoral politics. Built largely around interviews, the film interweaves these testimonies with footage from campaigns, rallies, party meetings, and election activities. Participants speak candidly about campaign finance, godfatherism, religion, family expectations, and the hostility directed at women seeking public office. One candidate recalls being publicly dismissed as ashawo (a derogatory Nigerian term for prostitute), while others recount intimidation, harassment, political violence, and encounters with hired thugs. The documentary also recalls women who have lost their lives in the course of political participation, making clear that these dangers are neither exceptional nor abstract. Running through these accounts is another concern: women undertake much of the work that sustains political parties, yet relatively few become candidates, making meaningful representation difficult from the outset. Supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Double Minority premiered in Abuja in July 2025 before screening at the iREP International Documentary Film Festival in March 2026, where it prompted a lively roundtable discussion. It also screened at the African Film Festival Atlanta (AFFATL) about the same time, extending its circulation beyond Nigeria.
For audiences familiar with Kadaria Ahmed as a Nigerian journalist, broadcaster, political interviewer, and founder of Daria Media, Double Minority represents a significant extension of her work. Ahmed has spent years interrogating political actors through interviews and by moderating a Nigerian presidential debate. Documentary allows her to pursue similar questions differently. Journalism reports events as they unfold; documentary preserves testimony, revisits experience, and sustains conversations beyond the immediacy of the news cycle. The film assembles voices ranging from Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, Ireti Kingibe, and Nnenna Elendu Ukeje to women whose political ambitions have received far less public attention. This range matters because not all the women speak from positions of authority. Some are still negotiating uncertain and often hostile political environments. One particularly striking image is that of a pregnant participant, reminding viewers that women enter politics carrying responsibilities the political system rarely acknowledges.
What emerges is not simply a catalog of obstacles but a contradiction at the heart of Nigerian party politics. The documentary repeatedly returns to the fact that women constitute much of the organizational labor that keeps political parties functioning. They fill campaign secretariats, mobilize supporters, organize rallies, canvass votes, and sustain party activities, yet seldom move from the grassroots into positions of electoral power. The film also returns to the arithmetic of representation. Women make up roughly half of Nigeria’s population and nearly half of registered voters, yet they remain a small minority of electoral candidates. By the time elections are held, the pool from which women can be elected has already been sharply reduced. Rather than presenting this as an individual failure, Ahmed locates it within the everyday workings of party politics.
The documentary also raises important questions about media and political intervention. At its International Documentary Film Festival, Lagos (iREP) screening, discussion returned to a familiar argument: politics is difficult, therefore women must simply become resilient enough to survive it. Double Minority refuses that logic. Instead of celebrating exceptional women who overcome the odds, it asks why those odds continue to exist. Its strength lies in redirecting attention from individual perseverance to the political culture that normalizes exclusion, violence, and unequal access to power.
Formally, Double Minority adopts a restrained documentary style, relying principally on interviews and observational footage rather than stylistic experimentation. If this occasionally limits its cinematic ambition, it also reinforces its political purpose. Ahmed allows the participants’ testimonies, campaign scenes, and moments of quiet reflection to carry the film without unnecessary embellishment. The result is a documentary that privileges clarity over spectacle while contributing to a growing body of African nonfiction cinema concerned with gender, governance, citizenship, and democratic accountability.
What remains after Double Minority is not a sense of resolution but a clearer understanding of why women’s political representation remains so limited. The documentary demonstrates that exclusion begins long before ballots are cast, in the conditions that determine who can contest, who receives support, and who is considered legitimate. By documenting these experiences with patience and restraint, Ahmed has produced more than a film about women in politics. She offers a compelling account of the unequal terms on which Nigerian democracy continues to operate, and a timely reminder of documentary’s capacity to preserve voices that might otherwise disappear once elections have passed.
The author used ChatGPT by OpenAI 5.0 for limited language refinement and editorial assistance during manuscript preparation.
