At the time Lucy Kibaki, wife of Mwai Kibaki, the third President of Kenya, died at the Bupa Cromwell Hospital, South West London, on April 26, 2016, aged 75, she had the unenviable reputation of being Kenya’s grouchiest First Lady. In the ten years her husband was in office (2002-2013), she was, in the words of a popular 1974 song by Mac Davis, “One Hell of a Woman” – with a violent streak.
Power inebriated her so much so that as First Lady, she became a terror – uncontrollable and tyrannical. Many Kenyans swore that she ran the show. She was not the power behind the throne, the kind of soft power that spouses of Presidents wield. She was the real deal, who humiliated government officials at will. Story was told of how, without reference to her husband, she forced Matere Keriri, her husband’s Private Secretary, to resign in their first year in office.
In May 2005, three years into Kibaki’s presidency, she made international headlines when she invaded the Daily Nation, Kenya’s largest daily newspaper. Angered by what she perceived as negative reportage, she stormed the newspaper’s Nairobi headquarters at night, along with her security details, and held the entire staff hostage. Footage from the encounter showed her slapping a cameraman who was tape-recording the incident.
As Kenya’s First Lady, Lucy Kibaki was generous with slaps. Some said her husband was not spared what became known as the “Lucian slaps.” When it came to the misappropriation of state power by presidential spouses, Lady Lucy Kibaki was peerless. Her tendency for aggressive, hostile and physically harmful behaviour, was beyond compare, or so people thought.
But if what transpired in Osun State on Sunday, December 7, is anything to go by, Nigeria’s First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, is in a pole position to snatch the trophy of Africa’s most irreverent First Lady from Lucy Kibaki by not limiting her wacky behaviour to her husband’s appointees as the former Kenya First Lady did, but also extending it to elected officials, including Governors.
On Sunday, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, marked the 10th anniversary of his coronation, during which he conferred the title of Yeye Asiwaju Ile Oodua, previously held by the late Hannah Idowu Dideolu Awolowo, wife of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, on Mrs. Tinubu.
Ife, Ooni’s kingdom, is in Osun, which made Ademola Adeleke the host Governor. In his goodwill speech, Adeleke not only extolled what he described as the Ooni’s remarkable decade of transformative leadership but also praised Mrs. Tinubu’s as a pillar of national development whose contributions have facilitated numerous impactful initiatives across the country.
But not even that accolade could dissuade her from a shocking overreach – interrupting the Governor’s speech and threatening to switch off the microphone as he sang a Christian song. Shortly before the “mo maa pa mic yin,” (I will switch off your microphone) threat, she had physically mounted the stage to order Adeleke to wrap up his speech in five minutes. Many Nigerians are outraged and rightfully so. But what Oluremi Tinubu did was a dangerous power signaling, which import should not be lost on Nigerians.
Her show of disrespect to Adeleke is true to character. She loves picking a fight in the market square. As the Senator representing Lagos Central (2015 – 2023), she once embarrassed the then Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, when on June 10, 2015, she refused to shake his outstretched hand during her inauguration together with 27 other Lawmakers, including George Akume and Ahmed Lawan.
On Wednesday, November 18, 2015, she wilfully took over the seat of the then Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu who was not at the plenary the fateful day having survived an alleged assassination attempt the previous day. It took the vehement protestation of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Senators to stop her from using the microphone on the DSP’s seat when Saraki asked her to second the $200 million Lagos State loan request. She sat on the Deputy Senate President’s seat for over an hour, a deliberate act of provocation.
On yet another occasion, she almost slapped Senator Rafiu Ibrahim from Kwara State. But it was her verbal assault on Senator Dino Melaye who she called a thug and dog during an executive session in July 2016 that threw the Red Chamber into a tailspin.
Melaye narrated how “just after she was first elected into the Senate, one of the Commissioners, who went to pay homage and congratulate her ‘mistakenly’ referred to her as “distinguished Senator.” She took everyone aback when she flared up and warned never to be addressed like that again, asking the Commissioner: “What happened to Yeye? Do you know how many Senators we have made? You probably should have called me by name.” The man apologised and quietly left.
We also remember her disparaging remarks against Ndigbo in 2019. That was four years before the 2023 elections.
Like Lucy Kibaki, her disdain for Journalists is well known, all pretensions to the contrary, notwithstanding. Once at a town hall meeting in Yaba during her first term as a Senator, a Journalist had asked: “We have heard of a few things about you and your husband and some of the things you have been doing in Lagos…” But she wouldn’t let him ask his question before she retorted. “Who are you and where are you from? You heard a few things about us? We are Lagos.”
But all these pale into insignificance, as disconcerting as they are, when compared with the Ife show of shame last Sunday. Oluremi Tinubu, with no mandate other than her proximity to power – by virtue of her being the wife of the President – has neither the right nor powers to walk up to the Governor of a State, elected by the people, to physically interrupt him while he was singing at a public event. The office of the First Lady is at best ceremonial. It has no place in Nigeria’s Constitution.
Granted, the occupant wields some influence but not to the extent of enforcing rules at state functions. To that extent, giving a sitting Governor an ultimatum is beyond the pale. What is even more tragic is that the Governor actually obeyed what ought to be an ineffectual order, a power overreach.
But make no mistake about it. Oluremi Tinubu is no fool. She knows that she has no political and constitutional right to do what she did. But she did it all the same – an audacious power signaling. And Nigerians must pay attention. Her action is not just about being rude, it is a dangerous power play.
The fact that she got away with the public humiliation of an executive Governor portends grave danger for Nigeria’s democracy. The path to power absolutism is not a 100-metre dash and does not happen overnight. It is one day at a time. Every little concession made by those who ought to resist executive impunity becomes a building block to the skyscraper of autocracy.
The First Daughter is in-charge of all markets in Nigeria. The First Son attends Federal Executive Council meetings and when on Federal Government’s delegations abroad, Ministers defer to him and he takes precedence in the protocol order.
Not only is the security architecture around him more sophisticated than that of state Governors, he inspects guards of honour. The First Lady physically interrupts Governors at state functions and the President unconstitutionally removed a sitting Governor for as long as he wanted.
Unrestrained power is not only a bully, it is avaricious. It is incapable of self-restraint and insatiable. And it thrives on impunity. What is more, the subservience of those who should resist it becomes an elixir. Nigerians should be worried that Nigeria has another version of Lucy Kibaki in the innermost sanctuary of power.
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