This is an outrage! Over 40 policemen and officials from the Waste Water Management and Sewage Board, an arm of the Ministry of Environment, this morning stormed the mechanic workshop of Nigeria's first woman auto mechanic, Sandra Aguebor-Ekperuoh, and sealed the place. Her auto workshop, where she employs only female mechanics, is situated by 1004 in Victoria Island.
Sandra, who has been an auto mechanic for the past 27 years, runs an NGO that empowers women called the Lady Mechanic Initiative where she has empowered and graduated over 150 women in Lagos State alone. Sandra has over 150 women mechanics in Abuja and 100 women mechanics in Benin where 50 of the girls are graduating in three weeks time. 40 of them will be employed by Sandra immediately after graduation in her Lagos, Benin, Kaduna and Abuja workshops. Some of the girls who have passed through her are now self employed with their own mechanic workshops and even training other female mechanics. This woman has done so much to empower women in this country and helped to reduce prostitution in her home state Edo, so it's so sad to see this happen to her. We should be celebrating this woman, not taking land from her.
She trains these girls for free, still gives them a salary and accommodates them. The land that was sealed today houses the Lady Mechanic Workshop and a hostel for her girls where the girls, some of them orphans, stay rent free.
Their reason for sealing the place? They are saying the land belongs to the Lagos State government. Thing is, Sandra has been on that land for the past 10 years. I've spoken with Sandra myself and she's devastated but staying strong for her girls. See photos of the sealed workshop after the Break.
