Despite Our Efforts, You’ve Abandoned Us, Livid APC Women Leaders Tell Ganduje

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

A forum of Women Leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has lamented that they are not being carried along in the scheme of things in the party.

President of the forum, Patricia Yakubu, stated their position yesterday in Abuja during a courtesy call on the national chairman of APC, Dr. Abdullah Ganduje.

Yakubu said, “The states’ women leaders will want to advocate that we should be carried along in all the affairs pertaining to women in the states. We are closer to the party women at the grassroots, the largest voting bloc in the secular world. Our demography should not be neglected.

“Since after the elections, Your Excellency may note that only one bag of rice and one paper wrapper was given to the states women leaders from the national secretariat of the party. Nothing was given to us during Easter, the Ramadan fasting period and Salah festivities.

“Even the palliatives that were distributed were not given to the women leaders for onward distribution to the grassroots. We party women waited and waited and waited to no avail, very sad.”

Yakubu recalled that during the 2023 elections, the women slept on the grass in open spaces during the electioneering period to ensure victory.

She noted that the house of one of them was demolished on the election day by the opposition party in her state to distract her from canvassing votes for the party, while the son of one of them was kidnapped a day to the presidential election

Yakubu explained, “Another woman was detained in the police station for three days on the election day.  Then one of us was involved in a ghastly motor accident during the campaign, because they did not want to hear of APC in her community and is still in and out of the hospital.

“Many of us got their cars damaged and some completely lost their personal cars during the campaigns and today, they are not mobile.”

Yakubu pointed out that federal government empowerment programmes that had to do with women sounded like news to them.

She added, “That the national woman leader and her deputy should involve the state women leaders in all their programmes from the designing stage so as to attract our full participation and involvement, by so doing will help capture the peculiarities of the various states.

“We, the women leaders of the 36 states and the FCT, pray the national woman leader and her deputy to periodically interact with women leaders at the state level, so as to have full knowledge of happenings at the grassroots and proffer solutions.”

The women called on Ganduje to involve the women in their programmes so as to boost their confidence, encourage participation and support towards strengthening the party, especially in states without APC governors.

The women leaders, however, passed a vote of confidence on Ganduje and the National Working Committee of the party.

National Woman Leader, Mary Alele-Idile, said the women were satisfied with the leadership style of Ganduje and his team.