Mrs Aisha M. Buhari, the wife of
President Muhammadu Buhari is probably the most loved person in Nigeria today,
especially by critics of her husband’s administration.
She first came to our
notice in this regard when in the course of her ailing husband’s medical
vacation in London, she famously declared through BBC Hausa Service that the
Buhari administration had been hijacked by a cabal. Long before anybody raised
the issue, she was the first to observe that President Buhari has no business
seeking a second term in office the way he was carrying on. She even added that
she would not join him for any second term campaign. I had written a piece at
the time titled “Aisha and that BBC interview”.
I said I expected that the
statement attributed to her would be disowned. But no such thing happened. Her
husband soon took his own pound of flesh when at a press conference in Germany,
he told the entire world that Aisha Buhari, his wife, belongs to the “living
room, the kitchen and the other room.” I didn’t support this brazenly
chauvinistic statement but I reminded Mrs Buhari that her primary duty is to
support her husband, and that this, historically, has indeed been the duty of
First Ladies. Mamie Eisenhower covered up for her husband. Jackie Kennedy had
to endure her husband, JFK’s shortcomings. Hillary Clinton saved Bill Clinton
by standing with him in his most difficult moment. Not every President would
ask for a Grace Mugabe, who pushed her husband out of office, or a Lucy Kibaki
who made Mwai Kibaki of Kenya look like a domestic victim. Closer home, the
tradition has been for our First Ladies to stand by their husbands through
thick and thin. Those whose husbands were Muslims, with perhaps the exception
of Maryam Babangida, took the additional step of staying off the radar. Aisha
Buhari is probably the first Nigerian First Lady to cultivate the public
persona of an assertive, irreverent, independent-minded,
critic-in-the-other-room, aggressive, resident and privileged “wailing wailer”
in Aso Villa.
I don’t consider this a
praise-worthy development. I stand by the cautious conservative view I
expressed in my previous article on her. From initial concerns about her
haute-couture fashion appearances, Nigerians have come to regard her more for
her occasional, but striking political statements, or such statements that may
be attributed to her. She reportedly bolted out of “the other room” about three
days ago, when she retweeted videos of two major attacks on her husband’s
administration on the floor of the Senate. Senator Isa Misau (Bauchi Central)
had accused President Buhari of surrounding himself with incompetent persons.
He even cited the example of the new Director-General of the Nigeria
Intelligence Agency (NIA), which in my view is an unfair assessment.
Civil servants are not
necessarily competent because they pass promotion examinations. The most
important requirement in the secret intelligence cycle may not necessarily be
book intelligence. But Misau spoke his mind as he painted a broader picture of
incompetence and disappointment, and the failure of the Buhari cabinet: 50% of
whom he dismissed outrightly. Mrs Buhari found this so quotable and impressive,
she tweeted the video on her twitter handle six times! Three days later, and in
the face of the public interest that this has generated, the tweets are still
there. Nobody has disowned them or deleted them. One popular caveat in
twitter-sphere is that “retweets are not endorsements.” In this case, it seems
we are not dealing with mere retweets, but actual endorsement. You retweet what
makes an impression on you. Mrs Buhari on the handle, a verified handle –
@aishambuhari – also retweets Senator Ben Murray-Bruce’s condemnation of the
Buhari administration. Ben Bruce goes about proclaiming that he talks common
sense, and although I don’t see much sense in what is common, uncommon sense
projects more creativity in my view, but clearly Aisha Buhari sees sense in Ben
Bruce’s unflattering criticisms of President Buhari’s leadership style and
ability, and hence she serves as his Vuvuzela. Ben Bruce has been going about
since then like a man who just got a sweetheart kiss from a crush.
Mrs Buhari’s conduct is unusual;
it is shocking in its extra-ordinariness, to put it directly, it smacks of
treachery and disloyalty. But it has fetched her enormous praise. My brother
and colleague, Dele Momodu, a one-time Buharist, no, in fact a Buharideen, now
a thoroughly disappointed “wailing wailer” has written a paen to Aisha Buhari.
Ben Murray-Bruce has also composed the equivalent of a poem in her honour. He
says she must refuse to be “cowed”. Ben Bruce is mean. Why use the word cow at
this time? Is he suggesting that Mrs Aisha Buhari should not allow herself to
be turned into a cow, when he as a common sense Senator knows that cows are not
particularly famous in Nigeria at this time?
He redeems himself by saying she
is an intelligent woman. Some other commentators have said that Aisha Buhari
will make a better President of Nigeria than her husband. There are others who
have suggested that she should become Nigeria’s Vice-President in 2019.
“Toasting” and “seducing” another man’s wife with nice words is off-limits in
my cultural space. I disagree with everyone on social media and elsewhere who
have been saying that Aisha Buhari is right to criticize her husband publicly and
to lend voice and strength to the likes of Senator Misau and Ben Murray-Bruce.
Reno Omokri has also praised Aisha M. Buhari. This is how we would be here and
Femi Fani-Kayode will be the chairman at an award ceremony making President
Buhari’s wife “the Woman of the Year 2018”. If care is not taken, Aisha Buhari
will soon join the Chibok Girls Movement or become an associate of Oby
Ezekwesili’s Red Card Movement.
I think something is wrong
somewhere. The position of the President is a national security position. It is
hard enough to be a President, but to have issues on the home front makes the
job doubly difficult. This is the very issue that came up the other day. One
character who likes to talk accused me of being sympathetic to the Jonathan
administration and using style to criticize the present administration. I told
him off and reminded him of my rights as a trained journalist and as a
professionally licensed critic and citizen. He held his ground. So I asked:
“Aisha Buhari criticizes President Buhari and retweets anti-Buhari comments, is
she also a Jonathanian woman? The guy had nothing to say. So I added: “if
President Buhari is being criticized in his own bedroom, by persons who eat his
pepper and palm oil, what moral right does anybody have to silence critics of
his administration?” The guy blurted out: “if my wife tries that nonsense with
me, there will be a meeting with my in-laws with serious consequences!” Case
settled, so I rested it.
The de-marketing campaign against
President Buhari is even worse than that. Within 24 hours after the retweet on
Aisha Buhari’s handle, it was reported that one of her daughters, Zahra M.
Buhari had also posted a cryptic statement, which suggested a condemnation of
the administration. Unlike her mother, Zahra does not seem to have a verified
twitter handle. There are even about eight handles bearing her name, including
one that confesses to being a parody. But of all these, the most influential is
– @zmbuhari – which has the largest following – 77.4k – and which seems to be
more credible. Under this handle, Zahra supports her father, retweets her
mother’s tweets including the ones already cited, she sounds spiritual and
poetic and in every measure, comes across as her mother’s daughter, as if
mother and daughter are united in a rebellious mission inside the Presidential
Villa.
I recommend a forensic study of
the retweets under her handle. In one case, she retweets @aminuganawa, a bright
US-based Ph.D, who writes: “I doubt if there is anyone who would want you to succeed
more than your wife and children. Your success is their success. If there is
anything that will harm you they are likely to be the first to notice it. If
you want an honest feedback listen to your wife and children.” That was three
days ago, shortly after Zahra retweeted her mother’s retweets. Are we being
told that the President does not listen to his wife and children, and that
indeed, outsiders have held him hostage? A rigorous semiotic analysis of
wife-and-daughter-Buhari’s tweets belongs to another level of analysis and
other revelations. But here is Zahra M. Buhari’s most controversial tweet in
the last 48 hours and it speaks for itself:
Sahih al-Bukahri, Knowledge
Book 3, Hadith 1
Narrated ‘Abu Huraira
When the Prophet (pbuh) finished
his/
speech, he said, Where is the
questioner,/
Who inquired about the Hour
(Doomsday)?”/
The Bedouin said “I am here, O
Allah’s Apostle”/
Then the Prophet (phub) said,
“When honesty is lost, then wait for the Hour/
(Doomsday).”/
The Bedouin said, “How will that
be lost?”/
The Prophet (phub) said, “When
the power/
or authority comes in the hands
of unfit/
persons, then wait for the hour/
(Doomsday.)”
The foregoing verse is probably
the most intellectually relevant criticism of the Buhari government to date and
to be attributed to his daughter’s platform is the scariest of all things.
“Unfit persons”? “Doomsday?”
It seems to me that some people
are sleeping on the job. The happiness of the President is a matter of national
security. The biggest problems that the Buhari administration has faced have
been mainly unforced errors. In the absence of a competent opposition, this
government has consistently shot itself in the foot. To add to that: a
President with what looks like a troubled home is the most unfortunate thing
that can happen to a country. To show a lack of capacity to manage that
particular trouble has sorry implications for the Presidency and the
administration. I may sound conservative but I think the twin-image of a
rebellious wife and a free-willing daughter posting negative comments about a
sitting President should be of greater interest to the intelligence agencies
and reputation managers.
However, it is possible that
there is a fake Buhari wife and a fake Buhari daughter out there being used to
amplify negative narratives, in the most treacherous medium of the time: the
social media. It is the job of the intelligence system to track that trail and
stop it, if indeed it exists. It doesn’t require more than a couple of emails
to Twitter, anyway, with complaints about implications for national security.
Zahra M. Buhari doesn’t need to have so many twitter accounts in her name. And
if Aisha Buhari’s account has been hacked, we should be told, and if she did
not retweet those anti-spouse messages, we should know even if serious damage
has been done already. If this is not the case: then we should say this: her
job in the other room does not include openly and deliberately discrediting her
husband. This much should be made clear. And if that fails, then we would be
dealing, more or less with the true quality of the man in that other room.
The bottom line in my view: This
President needs HELP. And he is not getting it.
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Hahahaha. The President Needs HELP. And he is not getting it. The question here is does he knows he needs help? And if he knows, does he accept help when one is offered? And if one is offered, is it in the interest of him or for the person offering the help? The problem of Buhari's administration is Buhari himself. If he needs help, he should first help his acute, narrow and parochial views about life, eschew religious and ethnic sentiments in his government and shun primeval show of attitudes towards modern governance. I can say Nigeria needs help and not Buhari.
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