There appears to be a lot more in
common between former Zimbabwean First Lady, Grace Mugabe, and Nigeria’s
present First Lady, Aisha Buhari, than immediately meets the eye. I don’t even
know why few people have connected the dots before now, seeing as they are both
almost always in the eye of a media storm.
For one, they are both
breathtakingly beautiful although I favour Grace Mugabe. My gosh, Grace Mugabe
is beautiful! If I had ever been Mugabe’s deputy, I may have preferred to
inherit her rather than the Presidency where anything to befall my boss. I hope
I am not giving Mr. Emmerson Mnangagwa any ideas.
But I digress, and I bet your
pardon. I am, after all, a man, and women like Grace Mugabe naturally tend to
have this type of effect on our reasoning faculties if truth were to be told.
But beyond their ravishing
beauty, both Grace and Aisha married men that were vastly older than them and
this more or less made them trophy wives.
Grace Mugabe is just 52 while her
husband, Robert Mugabe is 93. The age gulf between them is 41 years.
When they got married 21 years
ago in 1996, Grace Mugabe was 31 and Robert Mugabe was 72 years old.
What about Aisha?
The Nigerian First Lady is just
46 years old, meanwhile her husband, President Muhammadu Buhari will be 75
(football age? If you ask me, na who I go ask?) in less than a month.
The age gulf between them is
nearly 30 years.
Aisha Buhari was just 18 at the
time President Buhari married her in 1989 when he was 47 years old.
Another similarity is that at the
initial rise to power of both their husbands, both men were married to
different women.
Robert Mugabe was married to
Sally Hayfron in 1980 when he first emerged as Zimbabwe’s first Prime Minister
(the nation used to be known as Rhodesia, being arrogantly names after Cecil
Rhodes).
Major General Muhammadu Buhari
(as he then was), was married to Safinatu Yusuf when he first became Nigeria’s
military head of state in 1983.
But the similarities between
Grace and Aisha does not end in their marriage and who and when they married.
You see, although both Grace and
Aisha are both ostensibly not elected or appointed government officials, they
both wielded a lot of influence on their respective husbands’ government.
In fact, one of the charges that
ZANU PF leveled against Robert Mugabe and for which it demanded his resignation
or impeachment, is the charge of allowing his wife “to usurp constitutional
power.”
In essence, Mugabe’s Slay Queen
wife led to his downfall.
Aisha Buhari may not have led to
her husband’s downfall, but that she is also a Slay Queen is not in doubt. In
fact, in her own case, she is officially a beautician having studied it
professionally, and owns a chain of beauty spas. She is also the author of
‘Essentials of Beauty Therapy: A Complete Guide for Beauty Specialists’.
That she has been involved in
government affairs is not in doubt after she gave her warning to her husband
saying that:
“I have decided as his wife, that
if things continue like this up to 2019, I will not go out and campaign again
and ask any woman to vote like I did before. I will never do it again”
In essence, both Aisha and Grace
wielded and still wield powers (in the case of Aisha) and influence that they
were not given by any constitution or legitimate authority.
This much was clear in the fact
that Aisha Buhari was able to get the National Assembly to conduct a hearing on
the state of the State House clinic after she publicly berated the Chief
Medical Director of the clinic, Dr. Hussain Munir, over whom she has no
constitutional or official authority.
In 2016, Grace Mugabe publicly
warned ZANU PF and government officials about their conduct and threatened to
have them dealt with and in the same year, Aisha Buhari publicly warned a
popularly elected governor and called him an “unchained mad dog”.
But to me, the similarities
between the two women reached its crescendo this past Wednesday (November 22,
2017).
On that day, the Nigerian
Government released a statement saying that its most important meeting, the
weekly Federal Executive Council meeting (whose official Constitutional name is
Executive Council of the Federation meeting), was moved from its normal location
(the Council Chambers) to Aisha Buhari’s conference room due to unidentified
“technical challenges".
I am quite familiar with Aso
Rock’s facilities having started working there at the age of 29 as an aide in
the then Vice President’s office in 2003.
The Vice President also has a
conference room which I have been in. If the Federal Executive Council meeting
had to be shifted from its normal venue, why not shift it to the Vice
President’s Conference Room if ‘technical challenges’ is really the reason?
First rat now technical
challenges. What next? Does Nigeria now have a budding Grace Mugabe on our
hands?
President Muhammadu Buhari once
dismissed his wife’s foray into politics by saying "I don't know which
party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and
the other room."
The President never told us that
power also belongs in his wife’s conference room, but apparently it does since
the last FEC held there.
Africans once thought that ex
President Mugabe and his wife Grace played the ultimate bedroom politics, but
never was it reported in Zimbabwe that meetings were officially moved from
their regular locations to Grace Mugabe’s office.
Maybe it was Grace Mugabe herself
who was the learner despite her longer years as First Lady. Perhaps if she had
been more subtle and more persuasive in “the other room”, she and her husband
would have still been in power.
You never even know, perhaps
important meetings of state would have been shifted to her own office leaving
no one in any doubt as to who is really in charge!
Well the cabal seem to have
defeated Grace Mugabe in Zimbabwe, but we are yet to see who will come out on
top in the infighting amongst the Nigerian cabal.
What we do know is that there is
no love lost between major personalities in the cabal abs Aisha Buhari, who
they nicknamed ‘suicide bomber’.
If Wednesday shifting of the
venue of the Executive Council of the Federation meeting is anything to go by,
the pendulum of power may have shifted in Aisha’s favour.
Who knows? Maybe her next book
would be titled ‘Essentials of Power Politics: A Complete Guide for Winning
Other Room Politics’.
I know at least one person in
Zimbabwe who badly needs such s book.
Reno’s Nuggets
Ladies, don’t look down on your
man because he could not spend a fortune on an engagement or wedding ring. The
price of the ring does not determine the value of the love it represents. Guys,
the wife you marry, determines the life you carry. It is hard for a man to grow
beyond the wife he marries because her MOOD affects you. Her FOOD affects you.
And finally, her GOOD also affects you #RenosNuggets
Reno Omokri
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This dirty pig (reno) is seriously sick.what a dumb piece.gosh
ReplyDeleteReno the fool is flaunting his joblessness again. He lost his mind since they lost election in 2015, you go soon enter market.
ReplyDeleteRelax...I think you are the fool here...
Delete