About 50 of the women and their multiple children, who staged a peaceful demonstration to the Kano emir’s palace, solicited the intervention of the monarch to free their husbands.
A joint operatives of the Army, Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), Department of State Services, (DSS), and other security intelligence in a nationwide crackdown on operators of the open foreign exchange market in April, 2021 arrested several persons in Kano, The Guardian learnt.
Spokesman to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mallam Garba Shehu, had told journalists that the affected operators were arrested in connection with funding of terrorists in the country.
However, the wives of those picked at the popular Wapa bureau de change market in Kano, claimed their husbands were innocent of the allegation leveled against them.
Spokesperson of the women, Halima Jubrin, told journalists that the entire families of the 49 persons wallowed in depression in the last 11 months since the arrest of their husbands.
“We are devastated, we are weak and depressed since our husbands have been arrested by the security agencies. Some of the wives and aged parents of these men are hospitalised for hypertension. Majority cannot join us because they are sick. Our children cannot go to school because the breadwinners are nowhere to be found.
“We have tried all efforts to know there whereabout, alive or dead, sick or well, but to no avail. We visited the DSS office, they said our husbands are not with them and we also tried to take legal action, lawyers said the court cannot hear the case. We are confused that is why we are here to beg the emir to help us, consider our situation to intervene,” Halima appealed.
Chairman of Bureau de change association in Kano, Yusuf Nabahani, also lamented that the union had tried their best to secure the release but the effort never yielded result.
Yusuf, who insisted that only 23 members of the association a were rrested by security operatives, doubted the claim of the Federal Government on their involvement in funding insurgency. He urged government to do justice by charging them to court or release the innocent persons for the sake of their families.
The emir of Kano, Alhaji Aminu Ado Bayero, who earlier listened to the plight of the women and their children directed them to file their complaints in written just as he pledged to intervene.
