Saturday April 14th 2007. It was 1pm. I was on the streets of Oye town in Ekiti State, with my husband, Kayode Fayemi, the AC Gubernatorial candidate for Ekiti State, together with a group of local and foreign journalists and observers. The scenes were like something out of a badly produced action movie. Irate crowds chasing down ballot box thieves. Local youths setting up road blocks to deter hoodlums from escaping with their votes. Angry confrontations with mobile policemen. Outraged locals apprehending a member of the rigging squad and relieving him of his trousers. A group of women surrounded me and kept shouting ‘ Madam, e ma gba! e ma gba! – Don’t let them do this!’

As early as 8a.m., I had started receiving phone calls from women all over Ekiti. By mid-day I had heard from women in almost all the local governments. From Ido-Osi, ‘Madam, there is no voting going on here, we are being dispersed by thugs and police’. From Ado-Ekiti, ‘There are no materials or INEC officers in all the stations in my ward’. From Oye, ‘They want to kills us here O! We can’t vote!’

For the past two years I have gone round Ekiti State with Kayode on his electoral campaign. I had often said that I was not thrilled when he told me he was thinking of running for Governor of Ekiti State. That had not been part of the plan. An over-achiever like Kayode had many options open to him early in 2005, and running for Governor of a state in the firm grip of an unpredictable incumbent was not a particularly attractive choice. A key factor that swayed me was the prospect of getting to know women in the state and to see how I could support their development efforts. For the past 22 years I have worked on women’s empowerment programmes across the world. Why can’t I do the same for women in Ekiti? This was an opportunity.

And so I set about making women a key focus of Dr. Kayode Fayemi’s campaign. His campaign is known locally as ‘Eyi Yato’, ‘This is different’. Key to the Eyi Yato brand was the involvement and participation of women. When the Action Congress in Ekiti did not produce any female candidate in the 2006 primaries, we put pressure on them to make up for this. As a result the party presented Mrs. Funmi Olayinka as Deputy Governorship candidate, a great choice, based on her accomplishments in the world of banking and finance. The emergence of Mrs. Olayinka enhanced the credibility of our campaign, and the women were delighted.

When the campaign started in earnest this February, I took leave of absence from work to focus on the campaign. I worked with the AC State Women Leader and former Women Affairs Commissioner in Ekiti State, Mrs. Ronke Okusanya, to design a parallel campaign across the state targeting women. Together with Mrs Olayinka, we went to all the 16 local governments in Ekiti to meet with women. Everywhere we went we urged women to go out and mobilise more supporters for our party and more importantly, to protect their votes on April 14th. In addition to the rallies in the local governments, we held market rallies, and met with market women, beer sellers, hairdressers, female chiefs, kings’ wives, etc. On March 8th, International Women’s Day, we launched ‘My Pact with Ekiti Women’, a document which outlines Kayode Fayemi’s commitment to addressing issues such as women and girls’ education, health, discriminatory practices, economic empowerment and political participation to improve the status of Ekiti women. As the election day approached, the women kept calling with reports of how the PDP was planning to rig the elections. We kept telling them to be vigilant and stand firm. And April 14th came.

I stood there on the streets of Oye trying to make sense of the mayhem around me. A call came in from Mrs Okusanya at Efon-Alaye. She was calling from a police station after having fought ballot thieves to a standstill. The malpractices in Efon were so bad the results were cancelled. Immediately after, my good friend Funke Olugboji, was calling from Ise-Orun. Her house was under attack by some PDP leaders and thugs because she and her husband had led a group to retrieve a dozen ballot bags which were being stuffed in the home of a local PDP chieftain. As I was talking to her, gunshots started ringing out all around me. I took shelter at the side of the road and told Funke to leave home and go somewhere safe. Here I was fleeing from bullets in the midst of chaos and telling someone else to find somewhere safe. The news started to get better, and by 12 midnight, we knew we had won the election because we had taken 12 out of the 16 local governments of the state and won most of the state Assembly seats. By morning, the figures and the story had changed.

I salute the Amazons of Ekiti. I salute them for keeping faith, for standing up for what they believe in, and for their courage. I salute all the AC women leaders in Ekiti. I salute the women of Ikere-Ekiti who organised a protest march, followed by women of Isan-Ekiti where Kayode comes from. Some of the Isan women marched bare-chested. I salute the amazing Amazon, Mrs Ronke Okusanya, for leading 5,000 women through the streets of Ado-Ekiti. I salute Mrs Solaja who became an election observer, detective and movie producer all in one. I salute the woman leader of Oye Local Government who worked herself so hard on April 14th trying to protect the votes, that she collapsed and had to be admitted into hospital. I salute the brave women of Ekiti who framed the issues as follows: ‘ This is about our future and that of our children. Our mandate has been stolen and we will not rest till we reclaim it.’

I salute my sister and friend, Mrs. Funmi Olayinka for her fearlessness and courage under fire, before, during, and after the elections. As we prepare to claim our stolen mandate back at the election tribunal, I know we can count on the Amazons of Ekiti to be there. After all, they have claimed ownership of this struggle.

When I returned to Accra, my 12-year-old son asked, ‘Mummy, if this can happen, does it mean all the years Dad spent fighting Abacha were wasted?’ I did not have an answer for him.

– Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi is the Executive Director of the African Women’s Development Fund based in Ghana.