For Us By Us: This is what the Feminist Coalition’s role in our society is

"We are scared young Nigerian women who were never a threat"

Written by The Native - 22.Oct.2020

Throughout the #ENDSARS protests, the NATIVE will be collecting stories and opinions of Nigerians from all walks of life, from all over the world with the aim to connect our wider community at this trying time. With our new series, ‘For Us By Us’, we will be hearing directly from each other, speaking about the different issues we are all facing and tackling together, in the aim for a better future for ourselves and the next generation.

Founded in July 2020, Feminist Coalition is a group of young Nigerian feminists dedicated to intersectional activism for women’s rights in Nigeria. As organisation around the #EndSARS protests grew all across the country, Feminist Coalition patriotically offered up their platform as a resource base for Nigerian protesters in every state, fundraising and transparently distributing donations for medical bills, food and drink, security at protest grounds, legal aid and much more.

Becoming one of the lifelines of the movement, the Feminist Coalition have received several threats over the past couple of weeks, in the hopes that by dismantling their influence, the #EndSARS movement as a whole will be silenced. Today, with Twitter rife with rumours of plans to make scapegoats out of Feminist Coalition members for being an activist group at the forefront of Nigeria’s current civil rights fight, the girls address all supporters through an open letter shared with NATIVE.

We are scared young Nigerian women who were never a threat. We just wanted to contribute towards Nigerians exercising their constitutional rights safely, by providing food, water, masks (for COVID 19), paying medical bills and supporting legal aid for arrested protesters etc.

We do not plan protests, we simply donate to the needs of peaceful protest organisers so that they are safe. We have made it clear in our statements via our website and our social:

Over the course of the past week, we’ve had restrictions placed on our bank accounts and many people who have donated to us or received donations from us have also alleged and complained of restrictions placed on their accounts by certain banks. This is what forced us to move to decentralised payment platforms and only accept donations in Bitcoin using BTC Pay. Please see more details here:

There have also been threats to the safety of coalition members, FK Abudu, other Nigerian civilians as well as general concerns for the safety of peaceful protesters. These threats have been due to misinformation and defamation of who we are and what we stand for by bad actors.

We received donations towards the #EndSARS movement from well-meaning Nigerians and supporters of the movements both here and internationally. People have donated because they are all passionate about building a better Nigeria. All we asked for was an end to the killing of Nigerians at the hands of the police and that the government take real action and hear our cry as people of Nigeria.

Here is our statement on the killing of peaceful protesters in Lagos Nigeria on Oct 20, 2020:

For Us By Us: This is what the Feminist Coalition’s role in our society is

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