‘Aisha Buhari’s behaviour towards her husband is shocking and smacks of treachery and disloyalty’ – Reuben Abati writes

Former presidential media aide to ex-president Goodluck Jonathan,
Reuben Abati in a new article, analyzed Aisha Buhari retweeting videos
showing her husband’s critics criticizing his government. In his
article, Abati said Aisha Buhari’s conduct is unusual, shocking in its
extra-ordinariness and that it smacks of treachery and disloyalty. Read
the article below

Aisha M. Buhari, the wife of President Muhammadu Buhari is probably
the most loved person in Nigeria today, especially by critics of her
husband’s administration. She first came to our notice in this regard
when in the course of her ailing husband’s medical vacation in London,
she famously declared through BBC Hausa Service that the Buhari
administration had been hijacked by a cabal. Long before anybody raised
the issue, she was the first to observe that President Buhari has no
business seeking a second term in office the way he was carrying on. She
even added that she would not join him for any second-term campaign. I
had written a piece at the time titled “Aisha and that BBC interview”.

I said I expected that the statement attributed to her would be
disowned. But no such thing happened. Her husband soon took his own
pound of flesh when at a press conference in Germany, he told the entire
world that Aisha Buhari, his wife, belongs to the “living room, the
kitchen and the other room.” I didn’t support this brazenly chauvinistic
statement but I reminded Mrs Buhari that her primary duty is to support
her husband and that this, historically, has indeed been the duty of
First Ladies. Mamie Eisenhower covered up for her husband. Jackie
Kennedy had to endure her husband, JFK’s shortcomings. Hillary Clinton
saved Bill Clinton by standing with him in his most difficult moment.
Not every President would ask for a Grace Mugabe, who pushed her husband
out of office, or a Lucy Kibaki who made Mwai Kibaki of Kenya look like
a domestic victim. Closer home, the tradition has been for our First
Ladies to stand by their husbands through thick and thin. Those whose
husbands were Muslims, with perhaps the exception of Maryam Babangida,
took the additional step of staying off the radar.  Aisha Buhari is
probably the first Nigerian First Lady to cultivate the public persona
of an assertive, irreverent, independent-minded,
critic-in-the-other-room, aggressive, resident and privileged “wailing
wailer” in Aso Villa.

I don’t consider this a praise-worthy development. I stand by the
cautious conservative view I expressed in my previous article on her. 
From initial concerns about her haute-couture fashion appearances,
Nigerians have come to regard her more for her occasional, but striking
political statements, or such statements that may be attributed to her.
She reportedly bolted out of “the other room” about three days ago, when
she retweeted videos of two major attacks on her husband’s
administration on the floor of the Senate.  Senator Isa Misau (Bauchi
Central) had accused President Buhari of surrounding himself with
incompetent persons. He even cited the example of the new
Director-General of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency (NIA), which in my
view is an unfair assessment.

Civil servants are not necessarily competent because they pass
promotion examinations. The most important requirement in the secret
intelligence cycle may not necessarily be book intelligence. But Misau
spoke his mind as he painted a broader picture of incompetence and
disappointment, and the failure of the Buhari cabinet: 50% of whom he
dismissed outrightly.  Mrs Buhari found this so quotable and impressive,
she tweeted the video on her twitter handle six times! Three days
later, and in the face of the public interest that this has generated,
the tweets are still there. Nobody has disowned them or deleted them.
One popular caveat in twitter-sphere is that “retweets are not
endorsements.” In this case, it seems we are not dealing with mere
retweets, but an actual endorsement. You retweet what makes an
impression on you.  Mrs Buhari on the handle, a verified handle –
@aishambuhari – also retweets Senator Ben Murray-Bruce’s condemnation of
the Buhari administration. Ben Bruce goes about proclaiming that he
talks common sense, and although I don’t see much sense in what is
common, uncommon sense projects more creativity in my view, but clearly
Aisha Buhari sees sense in Ben Bruce’s unflattering criticisms of
President Buhari’s leadership style and ability, and hence she serves as
his Vuvuzela.  Ben Bruce has been going about since then like a man who
just got a sweetheart kiss from a crush.

Mrs. Buhari’s conduct is unusual; it is shocking in its
extra-ordinariness, to put it directly, it smacks of treachery and
disloyalty.  But it has fetched her enormous praise.  My brother and
colleague, Dele Momodu, a one-time Buharist, no, in fact a Buharideen,
now a thoroughly disappointed “wailing wailer” has written a paen to
Aisha Buhari. Ben Murray-Bruce has also composed the equivalent of a
poem in her honour. He says she must refuse to be “cowed”.  Ben Bruce is
mean. Why use the word cow at this time?  Is he suggesting that Mrs
Aisha Buhari should not allow herself to be turned into a cow when he as
a common sense Senator knows that cows are not particularly famous in
Nigeria at this time?

He redeems himself by saying she is an intelligent woman. Some other
commentators have said that Aisha Buhari will make a better President of
Nigeria than her husband. There are others who have suggested that she
should become Nigeria’s Vice-President in 2019. “Toasting” and
“seducing” another man’s wife with nice words is off-limits in my
cultural space.  I disagree with everyone on social media and elsewhere
who have been saying that Aisha Buhari is right to criticize her husband
publicly and to lend voice and strength to the likes of Senator Misau
and Ben Murray-Bruce. Reno Omokri has also praised Aisha M. Buhari. This
is how we would be here and Femi Fani-Kayode will be the chairman at an
award ceremony making President Buhari’s wife “the Woman of the Year
2018”. If care is not taken, Aisha Buhari will soon join the Chibok
Girls Movement or become an associate of Oby Ezekwesili’s Red Card
Movement.

I think something is wrong somewhere. The position of the President
is a national security position.  It is hard enough to be a President,
but to have issues on the home front makes the job doubly difficult.
This is the very issue that came up the other day. One character who
likes to talk accused me of being sympathetic to the Jonathan
administration and using style to criticize the present administration. I
told him off and reminded him of my rights as a trained journalist and
as a professionally licensed critic and citizen. He held his ground. So I
asked:  “Aisha Buhari criticizes President Buhari and retweets
anti-Buhari comments, is she also a Jonathanian woman? The guy had
nothing to say. So I added: “if President Buhari is being criticized in
his own bedroom, by persons who eat his pepper and palm oil, what moral
right does anybody have to silence critics of his administration?” The
guy blurted out: “if my wife tries that nonsense with me, there will be a
meeting with my in-laws with serious consequences!” Case settled, so I
rested it.

The de-marketing campaign against President Buhari is even worse than
that. Within 24 hours after the retweet on Aisha Buhari’s handle, it
was reported that one of her daughters, Zahra M. Buhari had also posted a
cryptic statement, which suggested a condemnation of the
administration. Unlike her mother, Zahra does not seem to have a
verified twitter handle. There are even about eight handles bearing her
name, including one that confesses to being a parody. But of all these,
the most influential is – @zmbuhari – which has the largest following –
77.4k – and which seems to be more credible. Under this handle, Zahra
supports her father, retweets her mother’s tweets including the ones
already cited, she sounds spiritual and poetic and in every measure,
comes across as her mother’s daughter, as if mother and daughter are
united in a rebellious mission inside the Presidential Villa.

I recommend a forensic study of the retweets under her handle. In one
case, she retweets  @aminuganawa, a bright US-based Ph.D, who writes:
“I doubt if there is anyone who would want you to succeed more than your
wife and children. Your success is their success. If there is anything
that will harm you they are likely to be the first to notice it. If you
want an honest feedback listen to your wife and children.” That was
three days ago, shortly after Zahra retweeted her mother’s retweets. Are
we being told that the President does not listen to his wife and
children, and that indeed, outsiders have held him hostage? A rigorous
semiotic analysis of wife-and-daughter-Buhari’s tweets belongs to
another level of analysis and other revelations.  But here is Zahra M.
Buhari’s most controversial tweet in the last 48 hours and it speaks for
itself:

Sahih al-Bukahri, Knowledge
Book 3, Hadith 1
Narrated ‘Abu Huraira
When the Prophet (pbuh) finished his/
speech, he said, Where is the questioner,/
Who inquired about the Hour (Doomsday)?”/
The Bedouin said “I am here, O Allah’s Apostle”/
Then the Prophet (phub) said, “When honesty is lost, then wait for the Hour/
 (Doomsday).”/
The Bedouin said, “How will that be lost?”/
The Prophet (phub) said, “When the power/
or authority comes in the hands of unfit/
persons, then wait for the hour/
(Doomsday.)”
The foregoing verse is probably the most intellectually relevant
criticism of the Buhari government to date and to be attributed to his
daughter’s platform is the scariest of all things. “Unfit persons”?
“Doomsday?”
It seems to me that some people are sleeping on the job. The
happiness of the President is a matter of national security. The biggest
problems that the Buhari administration has faced have been mainly
unforced errors. In the absence of a competent opposition, this
government has consistently shot itself in the foot. To add to that: a
President with what looks like a troubled home is the most unfortunate
thing that can happen to a country. To show a lack of capacity to manage
that particular trouble has sorry implications for the Presidency and
the administration. I may sound conservative but I think the twin-image
of a rebellious wife and a free-willing daughter posting negative
comments about a sitting President should be of greater interest to the
intelligence agencies and reputation managers.
However, it is possible that there is a fake Buhari wife and a fake
Buhari daughter out there being used to amplify negative narratives, in
the most treacherous medium of the time: the social media.  It is the
job of the intelligence system to track that trail and stop it, if
indeed it exists. It doesn’t require more than a couple of emails to
Twitter, anyway, with complaints about implications for national
security. Zahra M. Buhari doesn’t need to have so many twitter accounts
in her name.  And if Aisha Buhari’s account has been hacked, we should
be told, and if she did not retweet those anti-spouse messages, we
should know even if serious damage has been done already. If this is not
the case: then we should say this: her job in the other room does not
include openly and deliberately discrediting her husband. This much
should be made clear. And if that fails, then we would be dealing, more
or less with the true quality of the man in that other room.
The bottom line in my view: This President needs HELP. And he is not getting it.