Aisha Buhari’s Curious Epistles -By Festus Adedayo

Nigeria’s First Lady, Aisha Buhari, brings some refreshing aura to the Muhammadu Buhari government. Being a government that is widely perceived as uninspiring, lacking in initiatives and grossly disdainful of the wishes of the people, Aisha has advertised an unexampled and I daresay, unprecedented, activism that is curious, against-method and which is worthy of interrogations. I had earlier brought out the need to interrogate, as well as acknowledge this trend, in a piece I did over a year ago.

Last Friday, Mrs. Buhari, at the General Assembly of the Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs, (NSCIA) had continued on this curious path. Previously, she had upbraided the government run by her husband for fielding those who were not with them when the struggle to get him to Aso Rock began. Following this path, Aisha had also one day lamented the absence of a single syringe in the presidential clinic at Aso Rock, in spite of the billions voted for it.

At the NSCIA event, Aisha had told political leaders in Nigeria that they would soon regret the consequences of worsening insecurity in the country, urging them to avert this by waking up to arrest this drift into infamy. She was also reported at the event to have tongue-lashed state governors and ministers for what she called the inability of some Nigerians to have access to potable water and their obvious insulation from the tolls that insecurity is taking on the quality of lives of Nigerians. The situation, she said, was such that many people, political office holders especially, were not able to access their states.

“We must do justice to ourselves. As a result of long time of injustice done to others, today, most of us cannot go to our villages and sleep with our two eyes closed. We all know that and it is moving forward and forward…My husband has three years to go. We should fasten our seat belts, get up and do the needful or we will all regret it very soon, because at the rate which things are going, things are completely out of hand. The Vice President is here, ministers are here. They are supposed to do justice to whatever. People cannot afford potable drinking water in this country. We have ministers, we have governors..” she had been quoted to have said.

These are very penetrating statements that go deep into the roots of our current governmental afflictions. They are pungent and commendable. My interrogation is, what has the First Lady said here that are not mirrored in Omoyele Sowore’s beef with her husband’s government, or the views of those they unfairly label as haters of the government? For those who can decode grammatically loaded sentences, what does “at the rate which things are going, things are completely out of hand” mean if not that, “at the rate things are going under the Buhari government, Nigerians may be forced to seek salvation in rebellion, which may go out of hand?” So why is the First Lady not a guest of the DSS at the moment?

This is why, to my mind, the persona of the First Lady deserves to be subjected to very rigorous examination and interrogation. Is she real? If she is, are these not pieces of advice to be given to a husband at nocturnes, while the light is switched off or while he is picking his teeth, legs crossed and a newspaper held by his hand? Is this First Couple living together at all? Are these barbs from her targeted at the cabal which attempted to throw her belongings out of the Villa? Or, are these activist statements mere decoys? No doubt, curiouser and curiouser  is the name of these seasonal epistles that come out from the pulpit of the Nigerian First Lady.