In our environment, the comments made by Aisha Buhari, wife of the president, about how those who worked to install her husband in power had been supplanted by new faces from nowhere, rank any day as a bombshell.
This is more so when taken in the context of claims by Senate President Bukola Saraki that a ‘government within a government’ had seized power from Muhammadu Buhari.
Again, her comments were especially weighty coming shortly after the very public disagreement between All Progressives Congress (APC) National Leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and party chairman, John Odigie Oyegun, over the management of the Ondo State governorship primaries.
The row was grist to the rumour mongers’ mill – especially those who have been hoping and praying for a falling out between Tinubu and Buhari. For them, it was confirmation of unending social media tales of how the former Lagos State governor had been shortchanged and how a new ‘mafia’ had emerged to clip his wings.
But as explosive as her observations were, the damage was largely controlled for as long as the president and other powerful figures to whom Mrs. Buhari had made oblique reference, kept their counsel.
Her comments only reinforced everything that had been spun by the conspiracy theorists without throwing up much that was new. For instance, her observation that many of those who worked for APC’s victory felt unappreciated was by no means new.
It is an issue that had come up in the past and which one of the president’s spokesmen had addressed by saying Buhari still had thousands of appointments to make. So, in a sense, what she was saying wasn’t novel.
But just when her controversial remarks were being swept away by the cascade of daily developments in this social media age, the president goes and rearms them with his own comments. If Aisha Buhari’s words exploded on the BBC like an IED, the president reply was almost nuclear in dimension.
Was the president’s missus right in going public with a political position that put her husband in bad light? Would she not have been more effective deploying feminine wiles and skills in ‘the other room’ to bring the president to her way of thinking? If you were in her shoes would you have gone public?
I have spoken to many men and women who feel that Aisha was wrong in going public. Many cannot see how her action helps either her cause or the president’s. If anything, they feel it only brought the First Family scorn and embarrassment.
But that is assuming we have all the information about this discussion between the couple. We would also be claiming to understand the basic motivation that drove her to speak out.
Is it not possible that madam’s interview was an act of frustration after seeing her ‘Other Room’ lobbying rebuffed by the old soldier? Could it be that she felt the only way to get across to a stubborn general was to fire a shot across the bow – so to speak.
We can speculate all we want, but the fact is for as long as Buhari refused to be drawn publicly, his wife’s comments were gradually losing their potency. But the moment he uttered those words in Germany, the little cloud mushroomed.
Let’s assume that Aisha was wrong to have gone public with words that suggested that the First Couple were at political odds. But by making his denigrating statements Buhari only aggravated things.
I have heard people defending the president, arguing that he did nothing wrong as an African who was only stating the facts. We forget, however, that the president is no longer an ordinary husband. He may have married his wife eons ago in his own cultural setting, with his own sense of a woman’s place in the home, but he’s no longer an anonymous retired general.
Today, he is the president of the largest black nation on earth with women making up half the population. His actions and utterances are scrutinised at home, and they are even more so when he shares the stage with world leaders.
The world and the way women are treated has changed radically. We would be deceiving ourselves when we conveniently rustle up our ‘African-ness’ to explain utterances that are inexcusable no matter what has provoked them.
It is amusing to hear many invoking African and religious traditions to defend the president, because these same persons are spending fortunes training their female children in the most expensive universities locally and overseas? Surely, all that investment isn’t just for these daughters to fulfil their destiny in the ‘Other Room.’
I have also heard people say that Buhari was just being himself: a general who is trained to shoot straight. My reply is that history is replete with generals who had similar military training but ended up becoming some of the most accomplished diplomats the world has ever known. And that’s quite an achievement given that diplomats are noted more for wrapping the truth in cotton wool, than releasing verbal grenades.
So could the president have handled this differently while disagreeing with his wife’s position? Absolutely! She made comments about politics, but he broadened his response to include his worldview on the place of women in the home. It was too much information and it was all so unnecessary. Worse still, it wasn’t even a badly executed joke as we were initially made to believe. It was his firm position!
“My wife belongs in the kitchen,” Buhari said in part. There was a time many decades ago when ‘a woman’s place is in the kitchen’ was considered an apt saying. But not anymore. The world has moved on. That is why the federal cabinet over which our president presides has so many women.
“My wife belongs in the living room,” the president added. Is that saying that the woman is just another acquisition or decoration for the living room? Again, the evidence of the age disputes that position. US Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump is in trouble today largely for objectifying women. Our own president should be setting a better example.
Some people may want to run back to religion for refuge at this point, but history wouldn’t help them. Israel, India and Pakistan are all lands steeped in religious tradition and have strong patriarchal cultures, still out of them rose strong women leaders like Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto.
Finally, Buhari’s now famous words position his wife in ‘the Other Room.’ Any one going into marriage understands the conjugal responsibility that comes with the institution; it doesn’t require restating. But by playing up this ‘other room’ aspect we inadvertently align ourselves with those who see women as nothing more than sex objects.
I cannot imagine anyone who has female children of whom he or she expects great things, being comfortable with the president’s comments, or joining in the bar room jokes they have generated.
Buhari as president is not just a political leader, he’s also the father of the nation who should be setting an example for all citizens irrespective of their gender.
In Germany, while responding to his wife’s provocative comments, he could have said something like this: “I respect my wife’s right to an opinion but I am yet to see any evidence of her claims.”
It would have been short, sharp and disarmed what has turned out to be thoroughly bad press for Buhari, the First Couple and Nigeria.
