By Reuben Abati
Sometimes
the ruling elite go about their constitutional duties without a thought about
what the people think. The activities of the political class have made it
obvious that the opinion of the masses are not relevant when taking decisions
that concerns the majority of the people. Although the helpless masses have
used different media and approaches to express their grievances about they way
they are being governed, they seem to lack the power to provide immediate
solution to the problems. The economic and security situation in the country
has generated a lot of reactions from Nigerians in different quarters. Mrs.
Aisha Buhari, the wife of the president
have been very vocal about the way the president's handlers have been
running the country, She claims that there is a cabal in the presidency that is
thwarting the efforts of her husband to deliver dividends of democracy to
Nigerians. The recent attacks of herdsmen in Benue coupled with hike in fuel
price in a failed economy ,according to many
has also provoked serious criticisms from Nigerians, the recent
reactions of Mrs. Buhari and her
daughter- which many describe as anti Buhari-over these issues sparked off many
reactions and Reuben Abati captures all in this piece.
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 an 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
Source: Sahara Reporters
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