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My Second Term Charge For Aisha Buhari -By Segun Ogunlade

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What comes to your mind immediately Aisha Buhari’s name is mentioned in your ears? Nigeria’s First Lady? A woman that is not tired of washing her husband’s dirty linen outside? Or a woman that wouldn’t watch things go wrong around her? Perhaps you think she is a model Northern feminist. Whichever way you see her or whatever notion you have about her, she is a a woman of respected personality and intellect. Unlike many women from whence she comes, she has that which many women from her part of the country don’t have – a voice – and that she is using well as far as I am concerned. Her voice has been heard in many issues both on the ones bordering on her husband’s government and some others that affect women in her state such as the Social Investment Programme (SIP), an empowerment programme that is headed by vice-president Professor Yemi Osinbajo.

From her part of the country, it is a known tale that many women are not allowed to participate in activities outside their homes. Several of them are not allowed to get basic education, many of those that are allowed to get education are pulled out midway through it to be married off at an early age and poverty rate is high there too. Women are oftentimes identified with their husbands, living under their husband’s shadows, and at times having little or no identity of their own. That has been a long-standing socio-cultural and religious norms because the society, as everywhere else in Africa is highly patriarchal, with men having their way where women could not, and men doing what is considered a taboo for women. The society is highly influenced by Islamic teaching that requires a woman to always cover her hair and could completely veil them if she would and could share her husband with as many as three other women making four of them as commanded by Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). President Buhari’s talk about his wife belonging to the living room, the kitchen and the other room when asked about some of her activities, albeit could be labelled as a Freudian slip, showed the mindset of what men in his social clime think about their wives. Unfortunately, this assertion is true of many women from the regions the president and his wife are coming from.

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Segun Ogunlade
Segun Ogunlade

But Aisha Buhari has refused to limit her voice to discussing delicacies in the kitchen or is clearly not the type of person that would watch things from the other room without interference. Her husband might have scrapped Office of the First Lady for now, but he hasn’t scrap Aisha’s voice. Since the early days of President Buhari’s first time as the president, she has strived so hard to retain her relevance as the number one woman in the country. Unlike her husband that is not always keen to address Nigerians, Aisha always takes her shot at addressing the whenever she has the chance to. More than those before her, she has proven to be a very outspoken critic of her husband’s government.

Her arguably most famous talk till date is how her husband’s government was hijacked by some individuals around the seat of power. These individuals are what she called hyenas and jackalsand they wouldn’t allow her husband govern the country as he had planned to. Unfortunately, many of those hyenas and jackals did not help her husband’s election victory in 2015 but they have proven more powerful than those that helped him won judging by how much influence they have in President Buhari’s government. It is a prayer that those individuals would not seize power away from the man that we had entrusted it to so he could take us to the next level even though he hasn’t begun to chart the course of the journey yet. And for Aisha Buhari to come out when many women would have been silent in commenting about such an issue is quite unconventional especially for a woman with such socio-cultural and religious background where women’s voice is often not heard beyond the kitchen and the other room.

Her complaints together with her daughter’s, Zahra Buhari, about the State House Clinic also generated many discussions among the public. Before then, nobody would have thought that what is supposed to be number one clinic in the country would lack basics such as syringe and even paracetamol that could be bought in many places across the streets of major cities and towns. Perhaps it is why her husband fancy foreign hospital to get treatment. But it is a bad thing that despite all the money that is budgeted for the clinic, it still would fall short of standard so much so that Mrs Aisha Buhari and her daughter would openly condemn it.

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Even days to her husband’s second inauguration as president, she still condemned the SIP as not being available to women in her state and expressing her displeasure on why $16 million would be used to procure mosquito nets when such amount could be used to fumigate the whole country. Condemning the SIP from such position puts a question mark on the integrity of those handling it especially vice-president Yemi Osinbajo that is in charge of it. According to her, only in one local government has the SIP been implemented leaving out twenty-one others in her home state of Adamawa.

From all of these instances, it is obvious the woman care less about whose ox is gored including her husband and his vice. She has made her stance known that she could not be silenced or allow her voice stiffen by her background where men are placed above women. She has proven that every woman could find her voice if given the platform.

In her case, secular education that she got was part of what gave her voice. This is so because when one is poorly educated, he is prone to make some poor decisions and wouldn’t be able to speak about things about things affecting him because he wouldn’t understand them properly. She is properly educated and she is showing it by not allowing herself to be gagged and her thoughts hijacked by the hyenas and the jackals that are ruling alongside her husband. Unfortunately, education which has given her the platform to speak where many would listen to her is denied many women in the country. Many of them are from her side of the country. She could give this women voice by championing their course. Women, young and old, are subjected to all forms of human degradation, denied education even the Quranic education, and forced into early marriage sometimes as early as age 13 or 14.

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Here are my charges for her in this her second stint as the First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Instead of always criticizing her husband’s government, which is good, she should channel her energy to campaign against some of the socio-cultural norms and religious practices that are degrading to the person of a woman. This include denial of basic education, early marriage before the age of consent, female genital mutilation, etc. She should lead campaigns for women to be given equal chances as men in every sphere of the society. Their relevance should not only be useful where they display good culinary skills. The world has evolved beyond that where women are only to be seen and not heard. She has been seen and she is being heard. She should work to make that happen to several other women that are still living under the shackles of the society not expecting a woman to be greater than her husband or that all her education is for the man’s kitchen. Women deserve a good chance at life than the patriarchal society is giving them. She should make her voice work more in favour of those women that have been denied SIP in Adamawa and those ones that still wallow in poverty in the federation. She should lead campaigns such as all women and children of school age must be educated and early marriage should be abolished no matter what it is that still keeps the practice going. Child bride is a archaic practice. A woman going into marriage should be physically, and emotionally mature. Besides, if she had been given off in marriage to have a man twice her age before she could be educated, her story I am sure would not be told in the manner in which it is currently being told. Aisha Buhari should do more.

She should be the voice of uneducated women and children for them to be educated. She should make women themselves see why they should push for formal education that includes numeracy and communication in basic English. Those children with Quranic knowledge in Al-Majiri schools should have that knowledge combined with secular education so they could fit it in to the world. Having religious knowledge is no longer enough in this generation. All, women and children inclusive, must be educated up to at least primary school level. They should be encouraged to learn how to read and write for by then, their chances of getting out of poverty would be better enhanced. Aisha Buhari should not be like other Northern elites that are educated but are not pushing for secular education to be incorporated into the Quranic schools. She should use the influence of her office to talk to traditional rulers and imams about why secular education combined with Quranic education is expedient in this generation. People on her side of the country listen more to their traditional rulers and religious leaders than they do people in government. She should talk launch a project to convince them to increase the standard of the Al-Majiri schools and not be part of those that are deliberately putting millions of children in darkness by not allowing them to learn anything beyond the Quran.

I can only wish her well as she continues as the nation’s First Lady while also reminding her that she should do more than criticizing her husband’s government. She should be known for something else.

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Segun Ogunlade writes from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan. He is a final year student of the Department of Religious Studies. He could be reached via email at ogunlade02@gmail.com or his number +2348085851773

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