Fatima Mamman Daura’s Monday interview with the Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation is as audacious as it is revealing. Until Fatima picked up the gauntlet, there were widespread aspirations to put a face to the name First Lady Aishat Buhari mentioned as having recorded and then went ahead to release the video that saw the President’s wife fuming. She did Nigerians the favour of resolving that contention.
Fatima’s admittance of the deed may itself have been prompted by Aisha Buhari’s confident and most likely strategic revelation that she was the subject of this video, which hitherto generated a lot of arguments among partisans.
Had the President’s wife dismissed the question put to her on arrival at the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport from her long trip to the United Kingdom Sunday morning, Fatima would possibly have forever remained silent about the matter and smartly got away with it.
But Mrs Buhari has never let Nigerians down as to firing the salvo when needed. That was exactly what she did on Sunday. When she owned up to being the subject of the video and indicated that her security aides looked on helplessly while the embarrassing recording went on, she wittingly called out the person, who did it and dropped her parentage to boot.
The First Lady chose her words methodically and they were to lethal effects. Hear her: “The video was an old video, it was me. Actually, it happened in the Villa under the ‘supervision’ of my security officers right behind me if you look at the video. But they ‘failed’ to do anything about it because it was Mamman Daura’s daughter, Fatima, that videoed me. So, both me and the security, our hands were tied to do anything, and it continues like that…”
With the quantum of information she had given, the first lady has turned the fire on the amateur cameraman, serving notice on Fatima that Nigerians will soon come for her as the next question would very likely be: “Who exactly dared to make a recording of the first lady in that near base state and go ahead to release it?” It happened that Fatima took the bait by this needless interview thereby exposing her unusual behaviour to the disgust of many compatriots.
Much of the anger against the lady has been about the audacious disrespect for the person and office of the First Family. And this is not just about the irresponsible video but the venom with which this lady spoke on the BBC interview. Families in the sanest of conditions have their difficult moments, so, there is nothing novel about squabbles in the Buhari household and the inability of the heads of the family to nip such in the bud. There is however a duty to wash the dirty linens of families internally. And when there are reasons to open domestic worms to the public, there are demands for discretion as not to bring the family to irredeemable opprobrium.
Such discretion should even be more judiciously exercised when you are dealing with the President and his wife. Members of the First Family are a bit more than ordinary citizens of a country and anyone who treats them with disrespect does the same to the country. Here, apart from the very atrocious act of recording and thereafter causing the video to be shared publicly, lies Fatima’s crime against Nigeria.
But again, there is more to the issue than the obvious disregard for the First Lady, which is admittedly unpardonable. More repulsive of what one learnt from the BBC interview with Fatima is the sense of entitlement it oozes. Neither her nor her all-powerful father, Mallam Mamman Daura, is an elected nor appointed official of the Nigerian government, neither so laying claim to any living quarters, let alone engaging the President’s wife on the same should not even be heard of in the circumstance.
Truly, there are such irregular acts that elected people engage in all over the world, but they are careful to let these behaviours remain surreptitious, knowing full well that the public exposure of such misdemeanours can rock an administration to its roots.
There is a chance that the First Lady is conscious of this reality. One says so because in none of her past emotive outbursts did she broach the idea of an Aso Rock residence for the Mamman Dauras. Mrs Buhari must have realised that the avalanche of trouble that would follow such a revelation would hit her husband as much it hits the Dauras, so he has saved us the revulsion.
But Fatima is too possessed with the power of influence to consider the reaction of Nigerians to the anomaly of her parents residing in the Presidential Villa and feeding fat on the country even though they have all the wealth they need for their generations. The lady probably thinks her father and his “twin” own not just Aso Rock but also Nigeria and as such, the President is able to cede any part of the Villa to her father for as long as he wishes.
Listen to her speak totally devoid of remorse or ethics: “My name is Fatima. I am a daughter to Mallam Mamman Daura… if one reasons well, one will understand that it is not possible to say that the wife of the President is denied access to her apartment but let me give a context… The apartment in question is called the Glass House. You know that there are several houses and apartments in the Villa. When the President got into office, he gave the Glass House to our father, Mamman Daura. You all know that they are friends and are related, more so, they grew up together like twins. When he became President, he gave the Glass House to our dad and said he should stay there. Our dad stayed there for three years now until when the President’s son, Yusuf, had an accident and went to Germany for treatment.” As far as she is concerned, this was a facility to which her family had all entitlement and even the First Lady should not tamper with their peaceful occupation until they are able to move their things or never.
Despite all that has been said however, what is probably most worrisome is the question that this video raises about Nigeria’s security agencies as well as other national institutions and where their loyalty lies.
To imagine that security details to the wife of the President watched as helplessly as the First Lady painted it, while this security breach ensued, suggests that there might indeed be several people who operate above the high office of the President in the country.
Until now, the worry had been about the failure of national institutions to distinguish between serving the nation and serving individual office holders. But this event presents a more worrisome scenario.
In the case of the President, his wife and other such office holders, security agencies serve the nation in the proper execution of their duties. As a result, looking on while a citizen carries out an action capable of bringing the President and/or his wife to public opprobrium is indeed a disservice to the nation. This is not to imagine that agents of the same service that is currently prosecuting a former presidential aspirant and publisher of SaharaReporters, Omoyele Sowore, for sundry offences including insulting the President, became lame in the face of a man reputed to have enormous influence on the President. Shall we say that this man, the cabal he is said to represent and now, his daughter, are greater than Nigeria?
To be sure, presidents all over the world have confidants, usually unelected people whose influence has a lot of weight, but such people only advise, even, maybe pressure presidents behind the scenes; they do not have a hold on the processes of government!
In a lot of these cases in the United States, these power bases were led by wives or even daughters of presidents and in situations where they needed to bear influence on the machinery of government, they were empowered by legitimate appointments. This was the case with Hillary Clinton who was put on the head of the Task Force on National Health Care reform even as she espoused a few key pieces of legislation.
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