Aisha Buhari: Speaking truth to power

“Impressions are made, images are spun and icons are created – but the real personalities of the women married to the most powerful men in the world are usually warped by partisan attitudes.”

The statement above comes from the book, ‘First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s Modern First Ladies’ written by American journalist Kate Andersen Brower. This may be true of wives of presidents in countries across the globe, but how true is it of Hajia Aisha Buhari, wife of Nigeria’s Number One citizen, Muhammadu Buhari?

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While her colleagues elsewhere may have committed the manipulation of at least their physical features into the hands of maids and aides, Aisha must have taken the matter of her looks into her own hands by virtue of the fact that she is a professional in cosmetology. Aisha Buhari holds a postgraduate diploma in cosmetology and beauty from Academy Esthetique Beauty Institute of France. This is in addition to a diploma in beauty therapy she attained from the Carlton Institute of Beauty Therapy, Winsdor, United Kingdom.

So from the  “images that are spun” from her natural looks (most probably by herself), Aisha Buhari does a good job. She is, indeed, fair to look upon. She is a beauty icon. And the concluding part of Brower’s statement above? Well, if cause or idea is not seen in the sense of partisanship, what Nigerians have been seeing of their First Lady cannot be the picture of a woman whose thoughts and beliefs mock her action. Aisha Buhari is living a cause she strongly takes to heart. She is both brains and brawn.

In the outgoing year, Aisha Buhari has almost been a lone but strong voice resonating across the Nigerian political landscape. Not given to trivialities, Aisha Buhari’s status as the country’s First Lady buoys every issue she raises as being very germane to national development. And being the party at the core of the machinery expected to deliver good governance to the populace, the All Progressives Congress, the ruling party with Aisha’s husband Muhammadu Buhari as the president, has always borne the brunt of the First Lady’s vituperations.

As the wife of a presidential aspirant in July 2014, Aisha’s call on the then incumbent president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, to resign from office following a suicide bombing and an alleged assassination attempt on her husband could only be said to be trite, since all is fair in love and war.

As a wannabe president’s wife four years ago and someone who would always be in the vanguard of her husband’s interests, Aisha’s advice to Dr Jonathan then could not be less blunt. But 17 months into her husband’s administration, Aisha, who once said, “I was brought up to stand by the truth and this is how I have always been,” showed her other side in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

In the October 2016 interview, Aisha threatened to withdraw support for her husband in the 2019 election, though she said the president had not told her then if he had a second term ambition, because of his non-familiarity with a larger number of his appointees. “The president does not know 45 out of 50, for example, of the people he appointed and I don’t know them either, despite being his wife of 27 years… He is yet to tell me – if he’ll seek re-election – but I have decided as his wife, that if things continue like this up to 2019, I will not go out and campaign again and ask any woman to vote like I did before,” Hajia Buhari had said then.

If by her comments Aisha cannot be said to be too expectant of the government she is part of, then it means she is disappointed with the ruling party and in how the party and its officers have steered the ship of the country.

Convinced by the willingness and the readiness to offer a new lease of life to the man on the street, Aisha Buhari had mounted the campaign trail for and on behalf of her aspiring husband and the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2015 elections in Nigeria. The electioneering saw her canvass for votes in town hall meetings with women’s groups, and youth organisations.

But as events of national interests yet unfolded in the outgoing year, Aisha Buhari lent her voice – persistent and unwavering at that – again, more often than not, against her husband, the president’s ruling party.

The ruling APC came under Aisha’s scathing remarks after the party’s primaries ahead the 2019 general election. Convinced that, that was not the kind of democracy she envisioned and promised the populace, Aisha Buhari took to her Twitter handle @aishambuhari, and wrote: “It is disheartening to note that some aspirants used their hard earned money to purchase nomination forms, got screened, cleared and campaigned vigorously yet found their names omitted on Election Day, these forms were bought at exorbitant prices.”

All these, she premised in her submission, are against the creed and ethos of the ruling party. “All Progressives Congress being a party whose cardinal principle is change and headed by a comrade/activist whose main concern is for the common man, yet, such impunity could take place under its watch,” the First Lady added. That Mrs Buhari could not be pacified that her husband had just been affirmed as the APC’s presidential candidate hours before her tirade says a lot about her well-being for the commoners.

The knowledge that the government is beset by factors like selfishness, greed, negligence, impunity and the like, rather than a lack of the required human and  natural resources to take the country to the promised land, would always rile Mrs Buhari no end. Early last month, she talked about two powerful persons, who she said had constituted themselves into a cog in Nigeria’s wheel of progress.

While taking authorities to account, Mrs Buhari has had to appeal to the sensibilities of the public to effect a change in governance, by for instance, asking “the populace to rise against impunity and for voters to demand from aspirants to be committed to the provision of basic amenities such as 1. Potable water 2. Basic healthcare (Primary Health Care centres)…” Aisha Buhari doesn’t just sound off; she demonstrates it as much as it is practicable. A case in point was when she took on the management of the Aso Rock Clinic in 2017 over the alleged poor services being churned out. With one of the campaign promises of the APC being transparency, the First Lady, on behalf of Nigerians, demanded to know how the clinic’s budget for the previous year was expended before same was reduced in 2017.

The intolerance of the opposition’s stance in Nigeria’s democracy even if or when the opposition, which is supposed to provide a sort of checks and balances, is right, in 2018, only effectively elevated Aisha Buhari’s status to the pedestal of the main opposition in the country. She remains one of the few persons whose views and opinions on any issue are least contested, if at all. While a school of thought holds the belief that she only enjoys a ‘waiver’ on her utterances because she is the president’s wife, another claims that since silence means consent, she is just spot on and as a result, the only thing left for the victims of her criticisms is to secretly or silently redress the issues.

All issues to which Aisha spoke this year were also addressed by the opposition, but if its reactions were not jeered at, holes were picked therein or it was condemned as nonexistent.

In one of the reactions to Aisha’s comments since the BBC interview in 2016, which have rarely come, even from her husband himself, President Buhari said “I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room.”  Aisha’s roots and religion relegate women to the background — taking care of the home front.  The First Lady comes from Adamawa State in the northeastern part of Nigeria where education was not a priority for the girl-child for a long time.

Born in Adamawa State 47 years ago to a civil servant father, Aisha,  granddaughter of Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu, Nigeria’s first Minister of Finance, attended primary and secondary schools in Adamawa State, after which she attended Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna State for a degree in public administration. She followed it up with a master’s degree in international affairs and strategic studies from the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna.

Criticism of a sitting president by his wife is not new – it may only be strange – in this part of the world. And when this does happen, it doesn’t mean such president is hated by his wife rather, she only wishes he and his government get better. David Chazan, writing in The Telegraph, on August 12, 2017 under the headline, ‘Is Brigitte Macron her husband’s biggest strength – or his weakness?’, captured the level to which Brigitte Macron took her criticism of her husband, the French president Emmanuel Macron: “She drilled and coached him before make-or-break campaign speeches, re-assuming her early role as his drama teacher (a career she gave up to devote herself to her husband’s political ambition), carefully weighing and testing every phrase and usually having the final say. Often, acting as her harshest critic, she always coaxed him to do better.”

While reminiscing about her days at the White House in an interview, former First Lady of the United States, Barbara Bush, said, “The role of First Lady is whatever the First Lady wants it to be.” For Aisha, that role seems to be that of a truth teller, time and circumstances notwithstanding, in the corridors of power. Wherever and whenever duty beckons, she casts aside filial and political affiliations and speaks the truth to power even if that power is her companion at night.  All criticisms being ultimately self-criticism, Aisha comes off admirably as a voice of courage in tempestuous times.  You may agree or disagree with her, but you just cannot ignore her.

Her designation as person of the Year has been richly earned.