By The Time President Buhari Is Deserted -By Musa Kalim Gambo

Mr. President will return home by 2023 if Allah spares his life to the end of his administration or regime as Punch would want to call it. By then all the euphoria of being president would be over, no one will compete with Aisha for her husband’s attention anymore. There will be no Mamman Daura or Abba Kyari to issue out instructions to anyone without the consent or knowledge of Aisha’s husband.

If Hanan hasn’t found a good job or married yet by then, she would be around all day to keep daddy company. Perhaps, Yusuf would have become too busy with his business to be cruising around the streets of Abuja on his power bike or sports car.

Mr. President might have retired to his apartment in London to enjoy the serenity and intellectual company of his very good friend, Archbishop Shelby of Canterbury. Mr. President may decide to retire to his farmhouse in Daura to share the glory and wisdom of old age with his grandkids. He might also have gotten too weak and tired to be flying around the world.

All these aides causing unnecessary confusion for Auntie Aisha in the Villa would definitely no longer be there. Bayo the photographer would have left to pursue a more lucrative adventure elsewhere, we would no longer see all the creative pictures of Mr. President. Femi Adesina might by then have published a memoir chronicling his experience in the Villa similar to that of Segun Adeniyi’s ‘Against the Run of Play’ or that nostalgic ‘People, Politics, and Death’. Baba Garba might have returned to classroom sharing the juicy and sour fruits of his politico-journalistic journey. While Auntie Aisha may no longer have anyone to be mad at, just herself and the loud silence of the coming old age.

And we would probably continue cursing our new president, his cabinet and family members for their inability to live up to their electoral promises of heaven on earth.

Now, all this frustration displayed by (First Lady) Aisha within the week force my mind towards the direction of great Presidents we have had in both distant past and just recently; I remember Nigeria’s political Maradona and Military President, the ever smiling General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. Many historical accounts portray him as both brutal and and cunning, or brutally cunning as a hybrid of both fox and lion. When his wife, Maryam passed away in December 2009, I remember I was just in junior high school then, but the newspapers and television presented the image of a woman whom I wished had come to limelight during our time. We are told that she was the brilliant and beautiful pillar to her husband’s successful military administration. She is said to be the person who created importance around the unofficial office of the First Lady through exemplary humanitarian service to women and the less privileged across the country.

I am quite confident that if Maryam Babangida were alive today she would have given moral guide or tutorial on how to be the power behind the ‘most powerful’ leader of about 200 million Nigerians to Aisha. But since some few powerful individuals have forced her out of her place, it is just a matter of few years to come, and they will all be gone. She would be left to grope in the wilderness of loneliness as there won’t be visitors anymore, she won’t be seeing her name or pictures on TV, newspapers, or Facebook and Twitter.

Michelle Obama, wife of former US president, Barack Obama, in her autobiography Becoming shares her encounter with power;

“For eight years, I lived in the White House, a place with more stairs than I

can count—plus elevators, a bowling alley, and an in-house florist. I slept in a

bed that was made up with Italian linens. Our meals were cooked by a team of

world-class chefs and delivered by professionals more highly trained than those

at any five-star restaurant or hotel. Secret Service agents, with their earpieces

and guns and deliberately flat expressions, stood outside our doors, doing their

best to stay out of our family’s private life. We got used to it, eventually, sort of

—the strange grandeur of our new home and also the constant, quiet presence of

others.”

After painting all this presidential grandeur, Michelle eventually ends in a quite dramatic tone; “Then it was over. Even if you see it coming, even as your final weeks are filled with emotional goodbyes, the day itself is still a blur.”

While forging a transition into the beginning of the autobiography, Michelle recollects a scene on a certain night where she’s left alone and lonely at home; “What was strange about this night was everyone was gone.”

Well, finally, may Aisha have the patience to continue to bear the frustration at the Villa while she maintains her place in the living room, the kitchen, and the other room; where both her husband and his handlers have relegated her to.

—Musa Kalim Gambo writes from Zaria