A huge crowd of women in Kogi State took to the streets on Sunday to protest what they described as the persecution of a former governor of the state, Yahaya Bello, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.<\/p>\n
They called on President Bola Tinubu to caution the EFCC, insisting that the former governor had done more than any governor of the state for the people since its creation<\/p>\n
The women, led by various community leaders and party faithful, converged on the state capital, Lokoja, to condemn what they also described as a \u201cwitch-hunt\u201d by the EFCC.<\/p>\n
They called on the President to urgently intervene in the matter by directing the EFCC to allow the courts to do their jobs.<\/p>\n
They argued that with the actions of the EFCC on Wednesday, it was clear that the agency\u2019s allegations against Bello were politically-motivated and aimed at tarnishing his reputation, adding that they would not fold their arms and watch him lose his life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stand with our leader, Yahaya Bello, in this trying time. We believe he has been targeted unfairly and we demand justice. We won\u2019t watch him lose his life,\u201d one of the protesters, identified as Hajiya Halima Abass, said.<\/p>\n
The EFCC should focus on genuine cases of corruption, not political vendetta,\u201d another protester, who simply identified herself as Mrs. Boluwaji, added.<\/p>\n
The various women group leaders, who spoke in their local dialects \u2013 Igala, Ebira, Yoruba and others \u2013 urged the EFCC to be professional in its \u201chandling of the case against the state leader, Alhaji Yahaya Bello.\u201d<\/p>\n
They chanted songs, saying that Kogi people were fearless people and reiterated that they would not stand by and continue watching what they called a show of shame, especially after the former governor had made himself available to EFCC.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe Kogi people of Ebira descent cherish what our son, Yahaya Bello, did for us as governor. That is why we\u2019re out on the streets to ask EFCC to leave him alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not giving him out to anyone to crucify. He will come back to us hale and hearty,\u201d one of the women leaders from Ebiraland, who simply identified herself as Hajiya Fatima, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe, the Igala people from Kogi East, we are here because of our leader, Alhaji Yahaya Bello. He has never done anything bad to us. To those people that are looking to take him, please leave him alone. We have never seen the kind of his government before. He did well for the state,\u201d another women leader who identified herself as Mrs. Deborah said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A huge crowd of women in Kogi State took to the streets on Sunday to protest what they described as the persecution of a former governor of the state, Yahaya Bello, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. They called on President Bola Tinubu to caution the EFCC, insisting that the former governor had done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":49429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49430,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49428\/revisions\/49430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}