Like Amina Zakari, They Just ‘Murdered’ Zainab Bulkachuwa -By Abdullahi O. Haruna

The professional northern women who defied very constricted cultural and religious limits to climb up to the pinnacle of their chosen career are violently being haunted and subdued by vicious coordinated onslaughts. It started with Mrs Amina Zakari of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) who was hoarded, harassed and eventually denied what was her constitutional rights. When she was to be named chairman of the commission, vitriolic voices rose against her choice, according to the jejune judgments of the naysayers, she is a relative of President Muhammadu Buhari and that sealed her fate! For sharing an affinity with the president, she is thus unfit to assume positions she is eminently qualified for.

Not done with her, the fifth estate of ruins and depilating venom came viciously on her again when she was announced head of Election Collation Committee, like swam of flies perched rottenly on maggots infested faeces, they rose in anger tearing her to shreds. Her offence, they say was drawn out of the unfair allegation that she was related to President Muhammadu Buhari. While these elements unleashed their venom on this woman who worked diligently to reached her position, the world watched unconcerned that an innocent woman was been maligned and harangued by the very fact that she is a woman and from the north. Common sense was thrown to the wind as no one talked about her competence and the toils she endured to be one of the top shots at the Independent National Electoral Commission. Collectively, we conspired deliberately with our measured silence as we watched the orchestrated extermination of this woman’s dream.

In furtherance of their vicious game plan, the traducer hell bent in emasculating the rising fortunes of northern women are at it again, this time, and their evil onslaught is on another shining northern woman, her name is Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, President of the Court of Appeal. The same feeble argument put forth by those who wrecked Mrs Amina Zakari is the same template they are using for Zainab Bulkachuwa. Tragically, at the forefront of this barbaric clampdown is the People’s Democratic Party. For a party that has produced presidents and formed governments for Nigeria’s sixteen years of 20 years of democracy to champion such an offensive campaign against a woman is to say how debased, we have become as a nation.

In the basket of their mischief mills, they feared the neutrality of Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa who is the president of the Court of Appeal over matters pertaining to election petitions. In their faulty trepidations, they argued that Justice Zainab is married to the Bauchi North-Senator elect Ambassador Adamu Bulkachuwa. The traducer consumed in their jaundiced feeling seems to be convinced that judgments of the tribunals will favour the ruling All Progressive People’s Congress (APC) on the basis that Ambassador Bulkachuwa belongs to the party. What a pedestrian conclusion by people who prides themselves as seasoned strategists! So for this singular denominator, the career of this woman be halted and thrown away because she is a woman and married to a politician who happens to be in the ruling party? As I opined previously, the tragedy of reality is to be entombed in ignorance especially as it pertains to the workings of the law. That one’s spouse is the head of the court does not in any way translate to being an unfair beneficiary of the law. The law exists above the dictates of anyone, for the law recognizes facts and not rhetoric. To opine that the All Progressives Congress is using Adamu Bulkachuwa as a subterfuge to curry undeserved advantages from Justice Zainab is, to say the least, an unkind and unfair thing to say.

If indeed we are really worried about the ugly situation in the north where girls are married out early and denied education, then we must put a halt to this orchestrated onslaught on northern women who defied all odds to extricate themselves from the shackles of oppressive dogmatism. The world moves in accelerated strides when women are empowered to take equal lead with men. In a world defined by fairness, equality and equity, progress in human aspirations are assured and humanity better off. Let’s have a world where men and women are mutual partners in development.

Like Amina Zakari, Justice Zainab is on the burning clay of those whose trade is silenced the rising voices of women, particularly in the north. If Justice Mary Odili whose husband is a top member of the People’s Democratic Party has sat on the bench of the Supreme Court unhindered, why is Justice Zainab suffering all the bashing and forced attempt to dislodge her from the bench of the Appeal Court hearing the petitions from the recent elections outcome in Nigeria? Just this evening, like Amina Zakari, they just killed the dream of Zainab Bulkachuwa, another victim of womanhood.

Disgustingly musing