From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Forum of All Progressives Congress (APC) Women Leaders across the country has passed a resounding vote of confidence in the National Chairman of the party, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, over his travail concerning the impeachment attempt against him last month.
The women, comprising 36 State chairpersons and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) ironically lamented during the courtesy visit held at the party’s secretariat on Tuesday that they have been neglected by the national leadership of the party.
President of the Forum, Patricia Yakubu, who led the APC states Women Leaders, recalled that during the 2023 general elections, the women slept on the grass in the open spaces in the electioneering period to ensure victory.
Recounting the ordeals they went through during last year’s election, the forum recalled 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.
Yakubu further revealed that the son of one of them was kidnapped a day to the presidential election while another woman was detained at the police station for three days on election day, just as one of them involved in a ghastly motor accident during the campaign is still in and out of the hospital.
The forum stated that: “We, the forum of 36 States Women Leaders and the FCT have come to pay you a solidarity visit and unanimously say, we believe in you as the National Chairman of our great party. We unequivocally pass a vote of confidence on you and reiterate the fact that the 36 States women Leaders are solidly behind you and the National Working Committee of our great party,” they noted.
Speaking further, the forum however noted: “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,” the forum lamented.
She further pointed out that federal government empowerment programmes that involves women sound like news to them, stressing: “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,” they demanded.