The Forum of All Progressives Congress (APC) Women Leaders has lamented that they have been neglected by the National Woman leader of the party, Mary Alele-Idile.
The President of the Forum, Patricia Yakubu, who led 35 other APC states Women Leaders and the FCT stated this on Tuesday in Abuja during a courtesy call and vote on the national chairman of the party, Dr. Abdullah Ganduje.
She 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 us was kidnapped a day to the presidential election
Yakubu stressed that another woman was detained in the police station for three days on election day.
She added that one of them 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.
According to her, Many of us got their cars damaged and some completely lost their personal cars during the campaigns and today, they are not mobile.
Yakubu stated: “The State 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 pointed out that federal government empowerment programs that have to do with women sound like news to them.
She added: “That the National Woman Leader and her Deputy should involve the State Women Leaders in all their programs 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.”