Scores of women from states in the Niger Delta on Thursday protested the continued detention and harassment of the Rivers State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mrs. Gesila Khan.The women who protested in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, said the incaceration of Khan was an affront to mothers and women, alleging that men of the Department of State Security had been harassing the REC.
The protesting women, under the aegis of the Niger Delta Women for Peace and Development, however, appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene in the matter before it was too late.
The women, armed with placards with inscriptions, ‘Buhari! Don’t allow DSS violate right of women’, ‘The detention of Khan is a war against Nigerian Mothers’ and ‘Free Khan Now or Face curses from Nigerian Mothers’ condemned the arrest and detention of Khan.
Leader of the group, Mrs. Grace Amabo, said the continued detention of Khan was creating a bad image for the Buhari’s administration.
Amabo said the arrest was an affront to issues of gender equality and women’s rights.
She said, “The continued arrest is an affront to Nigerian women and the Niger Delta people.It also violates the right of women in public office as enshrined in the Beijing Convention on Gender Equality.
“Her continued incarceration by the DSS in Abuja is biased, selective and having tribal connotations to witch-hunt and blackmail our revered daughters who has meritoriously served the nation.
“In spite of the affirmative action by the Federal Government granting 35 per cent women participation in politics and public governance has not yielded result as the case of Mrs. Gesila Khan, the REC of Rivers State is a clear testimony to the gang-style raid against women in public service.
“The selective persecution of Khan immediately after the All Progressives Congress government was sworn-in at the federal level of governance revealed that it was a script that was already written down for execution.”
Also speaking, Secretary of the NDWPD, Mrs. Ruth Ibiama, noted that despite the sincere efforts by the aggrieved politicians to move their objections to a constitutionally established Election Tribunal, some politicians were engaged in dropping the name of President Buhari.
She said through the development, they tried to ambush the expected verdict of the tribunal using the instrument of power and other inordinate means to achieve their evil intention.
