Friday Musings with Ayo Olukotun ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236
“So, I don’t know where the social investment is – maybe, it worked out in some states. In my own state, (Adamawa), only a local government benefited out of 22. It failed woefully in Kano”
– Mrs Aisha Buhari, wife of the President, Sunday PUNCH, May 26, 2019
“I believe that if she (Aisha) were to listen to the information they have there, if she were to check our data, she will be able to find all the beneficiaries”
– Mrs Maryam Uwais, Senior Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment, The PUNCH, Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Beginning on a light note, do the above quotes sourced from the wife of the President, and the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Social Investment, not remind you of the song, by Ron Kenoly, ‘Whose report will you believe?’ However that may be, the contrasting narratives, to an extent, reflect the controversy that has trailed Aisha’s blunt criticism of the Social Investment Programme of President Muhammadu Buhari, who was sworn in for a second term on Wednesday, May 29, 2019. Unsurprisingly, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party has opportunistically seized upon Aisha’s rebuke, to claim that its criticisms have been vindicated by an insider in government. Nonetheless, we must go beyond that kind of superficial chit-chat, not backed by statistical evidence, to inspect the personal disposition and role of the First Lady, in the context of the political see-saw and governance issues, under the Buhari administration. In doing this, we may come close to answering some of the hanging questions that have been raised by previous commentators on the matter.
To provide a brief context, it should be noted that Aisha has emerged as an influential critic of Buhari’s policies, politics, and administration over the last few years. She, it was, who made it known that the State House clinic lacked the most basic therapies for diagnosis and treatment, while at the same time investing in impressive and high-rise buildings. It was the same First Lady, obviously a maverick, who raised a question of why two shadowy politicians should make big policy decisions in a government that was voted in by 15 million Nigerians, provoking thereby, a spirited discussion of the cabal that is alleged to be a mastermind of Buhari’s policymaking. She went on to say, last year, that she might not campaign for her husband, unless the insidious power map privileging the cabal was restructured. Of course, in spite of those comments, and the fact that nothing changed before the campaigns, Aisha played a notable role in her husband’s reelection, especially in her home state of Adamawa, where she held several town hall meetings. Not just that, very recently, she announced that plans were afoot to honour her husband, with a university named after him, to be underwritten by a consortium of foreign investors including Qatar and Sudan. One may justifiably raise doubts whether Buhari will be better honoured by a private university created to honour him, or by his making, lasting contribution to resuscitating the comatose standard of higher education in Nigeria; I bring this point up to debunk the claim that the woman is a serial critic, an opposition figure, or mole that does not see anything good in her husband’s administration.
Brutal and bruising remarks have been made in respect of Aisha’s vociferous comportment and what would seem to be tendencies for out-of-turn criticisms. For example, the Tribune columnist, Dr Festus Adedayo, had raised issues, late last year, in the following words, “So, what makes Aisha Buhari tick? … is she merely a flippant and unguarded woman who likes to hear her own voice; an activist whose advocacy for the common man is not bound by the locales of power; a frustrated woman who feels that ‘strangers’ are usurping her roles as First Lady, or a bemused woman who suddenly finds a strange and effeminate man in her bedroom, different from the man she married?” (Nigerian Tribune, December 9, 2019). Needless to say that not being privy to transactions that go on in the famous “other room”, we are not in a position to answer Adedayo’s probing questions into the affairs of the heart in the First Family. It must be remarked however, that on the face of it, there is a gentle irony, in what will appear to be, rival conceptions of power and administration, openly ventilated between a President, with a mercurial, no-nonsense temperament, and his spouse whom Buhari once dismissed as belonging to the “other room”.
Even at that, this writer’s takeaways from Aisha’s frequent and latest intervention go beyond whatever may be inferred, rightly or wrongly, from her emerging crusades within the epicentre of power. For instance, Uwais’ rebuttal of Aisha’s assessment is not totally convincing, to the extent that, as far as this columnist is concerned, the data “they have there”, presumably at Aso Rock, have not been widely made public, as a counter-narrative. Not just that, even if the President’s wife relied only on impressionistic data, there is a place for that in public discourse, especially, where officialdom has not been quick to furnish the general public with full and open disclosure. Furthermore, Aisha was not adversarially critiquing the programme, but the way in which it has been implemented by specific actors who, despite their rhetoric, may have questions to answer. What is at play therefore is not an irascible critic, throwing stones at any and every direction, at an edifying programme, but a constructive, even if piercing, critic who is eager that things should be done properly, and that the general public is not ripped off. Indeed, I regret that too few voices from inside the deafening silent bulwarks of power are heard, providing justified amendments to the thinking and actions of the high and mighty.
Our leaders are walled off from the public, and from enlightened conversations by coteries of fawning and adulatory yes-men and women, who merely second-guess the leader rather than advise him. In an earlier phase of Nigerian history, we had advisers and ministers who spoke truth to power. As an undergraduate at the then University of Ife, I listened to Chief Obafemi Awolowo praise the well-known economist, Prof. Sam Aluko, in the following words, “If Aluko feels strongly about a policy, he would take the pains to bring his ideas up to you several times; if you do not do anything about his suggestions, one day, you will find his opinion in the newspapers”. Today, there is a culture and veil of silence in the corridors of power. Those who should be talking will seem to have exchanged their liberty or right to disagree for perquisites of office. A sampler, what are the politicians from the South-West in the ruling party saying and doing about rising banditry and kidnapping, increasingly encroaching on Yorubaland? The answer is blowing in the wind.
To get back to Aisha, she is not without her imperfections, illustrated by a famed wardrobe that may well make some American billionaires green with envy. Nonetheless, in a season when the guardian priests of our democracy, the interlocutors, have chosen to remain strangely incommunicado on burning issues, we must thank the woman for violating, engagingly, the oaths of secrecy and drab conformism, even if no official action will follow her intervention.
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