The wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, has continued to win admirers for her forthrightness, doggedness and her resolute resolve not to suffer fools gladly. Not only is she not afraid to speak truth to power, she also refuses to be compromised by the fact that even though she is within the corridors of power and very comfortable in every material particular, she also would not be satisfied to just keep quiet, even though she is not in any way likely to be affected by the many ills in the society which she has openly condemned.
Sometime in October 2017, this column in a piece titled, In Love With Aisha Buhari, commended the First Lady and her daughter Zahra for speaking out on the deplorable state of health services in the country with particular emphasis on the terrible state of the State House clinic to which huge sums of money are budgeted every year and demanded accountability on the clinic’s funds by its management.
Mrs. Buhari, at that time, was re-echoing her daughter, Zahra, who had upbraided the State House permanent secretary, on social media, asking him to account for more than N3 billion budgeted for the clinic. Recall also, that Mrs. Buhari, two years ago, had warned her husband to brace up or he would not get her backing come 2019.
Speaking with the BBC Hausa service, she said Buhari’s government had been hijacked by only a few people. Her words: “The President does not know 45 out of 50 of the people he appointed and I don’t know them either, despite being his wife of 27 years… some people are sitting down in their homes folding their arms only for them to be called to come and head an agency or a ministerial position.”
Again, On Sunday, October 7, 2018, Mrs. Buhari launched a scathing attack on her husband’s political party the All Progressives Congress (APC), in an angry message splashed on her social media pages.
The First Lady who was complaining about the manner the party conducted its primaries had said, “It is disheartening to note that some aspirants used their hard earned money to purchase nomination forms, got screened, cleared and campaigned vigorously yet found their names omitted on election day. These forms were bought at exorbitant prices. Many others contested and yet had their result delayed, fully knowing that automatic tickets have been given to other people.
“All Progressives Congress (APC) being a party whose cardinal principle is change and headed by a comrade/activist whose main concern is for the common man, yet, such impunity could take place under its watch.
“It is important for the populace to rise against impunity and for voters to demand from aspirants to be committed to the provision of basic amenities such as potable water, basic health care (Primary Health Care centres). Given this development, one will not hesitate to dissociate from such unfairness, be neutral and speak for the voiceless; for education within conducive and appropriate learning environments. Let us vote wisely! Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
It is easy to dismiss Mrs. Buhari’s attack of the APC hierarchy as selfish. Some have said she was angry because her younger brother, Mahmood Halilu, was denied the governorship ticket of the APC in Adamawa State. That might just be true, but can anyone fault her logic? Who does not know that the bane of both the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the ruling APC, is lack of internal democracy?
Recently, and consistent with her proclivity to call a spade only by its name, at the national women leadership summit organised by Project 4+4 for Buhari and Osinbajo 2019, a political group, she spoke against two men who have dominated a government which emerged through the votes of over 15 million people.
She said, “Our votes were 15.4 million in the last elections and after that only for us to be dominated by two people… this is totally unacceptable. If 15.4 million people can bring in a government and only for the government to be dominated by two people or three people, where are the men of Nigeria? Where are the Nigerian men? What are you doing? Instead of them to come together and fight them, they keep visiting them one after the other, licking their shoes (I’m sorry to use those words).”
She said taking back the country from the impostors was not about people of the ages of her husband and herself but about the children and Nigerians in the diaspora who should have a home to return to and contribute to its building.
For any fair-minded person, the First Lady in all her interventions has remained flawless. I dare say that people faulting her outburst must be seen for who they are: bootlickers and hypocrites. She has continued to remain the blunt person that she is with the truth and the truth we know, the Bible admonishes, will set us free.
Your Excellency, the First Lady, I want to submit that, true to your assertion, Nigerian men have since lost their manhood. Madam First Lady, perhaps I should narrate a story which I cannot substantiate but for the purpose of this argument, aptly puts the story of the Nigerian men today in proper perspective.
Legend has it that robbers held some travellers hostage and demanded that they queued according to their genders and a man was spotted queueing alongside women. When he was asked what business he had queueing behind women, the man quipped that there were no men around there except the robbers who have been ordering them around and on whose hands their fates lie.
Your Excellency, you are the only man I see around now. Perhaps, since after the death of Chief Gani Fawehinmi, who remained consistent in speaking truth to power, what we have as men now are political jobbers who like the famed chameleon constantly change with their immediate environment. We have people who because they have political appointments and are favoured today, do not see anything wrong with the status quo until they fall out of favour or are in opposition before they begin to scream marginalisation, imbalance in appointments and whip up ethnic and religious sentiments.
Your Excellency, the fate of the Nigerian people is made worse by the fact that the clergy who used to serve as the moral compass of the society are now engaged in a frenzied race to outdo one another in material acquisition. They insist they can conveniently serve both God almighty and mammon in clear defiance to Biblical injunction.
Finally, our good-natured First Lady, continue to speak on behalf of the voiceless. Remember that just like John the Baptist, you risk being a lone voice in very huge wilderness of castrated men, but be reassured that, like John the Baptist, although beheaded, history will remember you kindly for speaking up, even in comfort for the voiceless, when many lost their voices.
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