South South Zonal Woman Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Racheal Akpabio, recently took women from the zone on a solidarity visit to the wife of the president-elect, Aisha Buhari, in Abuja. She tells Assistant Editor (North), CHUKS EHIRIM, the essence of the visit and the expectations of Nigerian women from the Buhari administration.
Meeting with the wife of the president-elect, Mrs. Aisha Buhari
You know we just had a very long period of rallies and you will agree with me that it wasn’t an easy thing to go round this country. And then finally, we went for the elections and we won gallantly. So we had to go to pay solidarity visit. We had also gone to pledge our loyalty to her and to tell her that we would support her in this great change, change in educational system, change for youths to have jobs, change so that corruption would be eradicated in this country.
These are things we have in our manifesto. If you go to our manifesto, you will know that we are ready to create jobs. We are not going to just have quality education; we are going to have qualitative and competitive education where our children from Nigeria can be employed anywhere in the World.
Advice to General Muhammadu Buhari on the company to keep
I want to let you know that the man, Buhari, is a man of integrity, a man of wisdom, someone who has a vision and purpose for this country. He already knows that surrounding himself with people who will distract him can be very dangerous. He knows the expectations of Nigerians. He knows the high hopes, he knows that we want performance. He knows that we want productivity and so he will give it to Nigerians. I can tell you that this is real change.
Place of women in Buhari’s government
We, women, already have the Beijing Resolution. We won’t let that lie low. We will go after it; we will get it. But one thing you need to know is that the president-elect will definitely do what is in the Nigerian constitution. Whatever is in the Nigerian constitution is what he will do. But I can tell you that our party, including Buhari, is very gender-friendly. So we as women of Nigeria expect to get the best from his government.
Assessing the outing of the APC in the presidential and NASS elections
Presidential and National Assembly elections showed that in the South South, there was so much of federal presence, where you had a lot of tactics that were employed in order to rig against us to meet up because they knew they were lagging behind. They have said, on television, that they had to deliver their states to the president, to show their support to him.
But the most important thing is that we are moving into Aso Rock on May 29.
APC challenging the outcome of the election, especially the National Assembly election, in court
You know that people who are aggrieved know where to take it to, and that place is the election tribunal. So I want to believe that those who were wrongly rigged out will go to the election tribunal and justice will be given there, especially if they are able to close their tracks and have evidence.