Aisha Buhari

By Dons Eze

Dear Wife of the President,

We most heartily welcome you back to Nigeria after spending about six months in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, even if you had abandoned your dear husband, and jettisoned your enviable role as Mother of the Nation.

The information we got from the Daily Trust Newspaper, the other day, was that you had quietly sneaked in to Nigeria, and are now at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, without any noise, without ceremonies, and without protocols, the same way you left the country in September last year, after one of your daughters, Hanan, got married.

But up till now, the Presidency has not told us that you are back. They do not want to say anything about it. We do not know what you have done to them, why they do not like your face.

Dear Wife of the President, during your long sojourn overseas, we were deeply worried, seriously concerned about your whereabouts. Nobody, not even the Presidency, could tell us the reason for your abscondment from your duty post. They all kept quiet and avoided making any comment about it, which is very unfortunate.

This is in spite of the fact that you are no longer an ordinary citizen, but a public figure. We have not seen anywhere in the world where a person of your calibre would simply vamoose and left the seat of power, without any trace, and everybody would keep quiet.

Dear Mother of the Nation, we really appreciate your problem, that is to say, your predicament. We had observed your enthusiasm, your total commitment, when your husband was canvassing for votes to be President in 2015: how you followed the campaign train all over the country, mobilizing women, and assuring them that all would be well as soon as your husband ascended the throne. They listened to you, obeyed you, and voted overwhelmingly for him.

Unfortunately, as soon as the man ascended the Presidential throne, everything changed. Those who were no where near the campaign train, completely took over, and began to dictate the course of events: what would happen in government, who would get what, and who would not get anything.

You were not happy. When you tried to raise your voice to complain, nobody listened to you. They even refused to allow you to bear the traditional title of “First Lady”, as is customary all over the world, and maintained that you should be satisfied with being addressed as “Wife of the President”.

Again, when you wanted to raise your voice about the goings-on in the country, how the ship of state was derailing, reminding them of their campaign promises, which they seem to have abandoned, they shouted you down. Even our President did not help matters. He told us not to listen to you, that your only place was “in the oza room”. We laughed it off.

But the other day, we saw our President joyfully welcoming Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman, and the first African, to be the Director-General of World Trade Organization (WTO), not minding that Ngozi herself had a husband, and knows the road to the “other room.”

Dear Wife of the President, we really sympathise with you for the trauma you have been passing through since the assumption of office of Mr. President. We heard you complain, some time in the past, how you were prevented from accessing some parts of Aso Rock by those who were not even supposed to be there. This is astonishing and very hard to believe.

Since the advent of the present democratic dispensation, you are the only President’s wife who does not have a pet project. Even the wives of some former military Heads of State, had dazzled with their pet projects. Yet, they denied you your own pet project, and concluded that you should be only good for “the oza room”. That is not fair.

We do really agree with you that the only option you had was for you to check out of the country, since they have crippled you, by not allowing you to enjoy your God-given position. We also see your decision to relocate overseas as sort of a silent protest against how you were being treated, which had enabled you to ease off tension and get yourself recollect. We thank God for that.

Dear Wife of the President, your long absence from Nigeria might have done some incalculable harm to the image of the First Family. It gave room for some rumour mongers, bad “belle” people, to begin to manufacture some fake news, bandying about some conspiracy theories.

They alleged that your departure from Nigeria was primarily due to the fact that you just discovered that the man you were cohabitating with, the present occupant of Aso Rock, was not the person you were living with before. They had therefore claimed that the present occupant of Aso Rock “is Jubril from Sudan”, and that was why, on discovering it, you left the country unceremoniously as.

What an arrant nonsense. What a wicked lie. Idlers. You should not mind them. Now that you are back in Aso Rock, will put lie to this wicked story. They will swallow their words, shut up their ugly mouths, and bury their faces in shame.

Dear Wife of the President, your long sojourn overseas might have given you opportunity to keep tab on the goings-on in the country, from a detached point of view. Therefore, you would have observed the low level into which Nigeria is now sunk. Each group in the country is practically going its own way, no unity, no trust on the other, suspecting everybody, even those in government, who surpritend over the affairs the nation. Cynicism everywhere, which is unfortunate.

Dear Mother of the Nation, even though we know that your voice does not usually make any meaning to them, still we would appreciate that you do not keep quiet. Do not surrender. Do not capitulate. Continue to raise your voice against injustices in society. This is to clear your conscience, as we ourselves have been doing. We have made it a point of duty to always speak our mind, whether or not the authorities hear, is not our concern. But then, we would have done our duty, and cleared our conscience.

We would therefore love you to equally adopt the same stance. Don’t keep quiet. Don’t run away from your duty post. Continue the struggle. One day, we will triumph.

God bless you.

Dons Eze, KSJI