Aisha Buhari was born on February 17, 1971 in Adamawa State… Aisha and Muhammadu Buhari have five children together and one grandchild.
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Lao Tzu
Omoniyi Salaudeen
Given a free hand to act, Aisha Buhari, the wife of President Muhammadu Buhari, would have chased out all the ‘hawks’ within the corridors of power one after the other. Or in the worst scenario, she would have cast demons out of the two men who she believes are throwing spanners in the wheel of progress thereby preventing the administration of her husband from fulfilling his electoral promises to the people.
Muhammadu Buhari: Treading on rough old path
The iron-willed First Lady has never hidden her disdain for the cabal who will not allow the government to function maximally to the benefit of all Nigerians, especially the APC loyalists who toiled day and night to ensure the victory of her husband.
But this is exclusively a governmental affair; she does not have the powers to hire and fire. She is also not unaware of religious and socio-cultural inhibitions in her part of the world that prevent women from ‘putting mouth’ in certain sensitive matters; not even the one involving the workings of a government.
The first time she had the opportunity to cry out, the courageous wife of the president ferociously attacked the cabal, accusing the unnamed individuals of constituting a distraction to the smooth running of the government, saying that they were reaping where they did not sow. And she got a loud applause for it both from the ruling party, as well as the opposition.
In an explosive interview with the BBC Hausa, she had declared that Buhari’s government had been hijacked by a few men who were “behind presidential appointments”. Worried by the growing discontent among the supporters of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), she called for a cabinet shake up, warning that: “I may not back him at the next election unless he shakes up his government.”
Her words: “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 for 27 years. Some people are sitting down at their homes folding their arms only for them to be called to come and head an agency or ministerial position.
“Some of them don’t even have voters’ card, and those who made sacrifice have been reduced to nothing and I’m certainly not happy with the way things are going. 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. I will never do it again.”
President Buhari, when confronted with the allegations during a joint press briefing with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, laughed it off and 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.” This expectedly sparked off an outrage of spontaneous reactions, especially among women. His critics said the statement was demeaning for the women-folk.
Though the president may not have admitted being under the spell of any cabal, real or imaginary, Aisha’s fears eventually came to pass. The dissident members of the APC who subsequently decamped en masse to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) cited lack of political patronage as part of their reasons for the defection.
Analysts are quick to link the president’s dilemma to his inaugural remark, saying he belongs to everybody and belongs to nobody. This presidential popular dictum is believed to have accounted for the inability of the APC to stop the emergence of Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Yakubu Dogara, who led the recent gale of defections in the two chambers.
Now, the game is on again. And Aisha is not giving up on them. In her fresh rage of anger, she spanked them again, describing them as retrogressive elements preventing the government from moving forward.
While speaking at a conference recently organized by Project 4+4 in Abuja, she again disclosed that two powerful personalities are hindering and frustrating speedy development of the country under her husband’s administration, alleging that they have constituted themselves as a cog in the wheel of speedy development of the country.
Again, the First lady, did not mention the names of the two powerful persons, but explained that the government had achieved a lot, but could have achieved more or even achieved all it had in one year, but for the two people in government who will never allow things to move fast.
She said that she was disappointed in men who rather than fight these two men would go to them in the night begging for favour, and urged Nigerian women to rise and fight. She also appealed to them to ensure victory for the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration in 2019.
According to her, the social investment programme of the administration is targeted at women and their children in order to reduce the level of poverty among them.
For the present dispensation that is running out, the cabal has no doubt survived Aisha’s onslaught. If APC wins again, perhaps, she would need to sanctify the Presidential Villa to ward off further invasion of the so-called power mongers. In that event, Buhari too would need to show that “he is a real democrat,” and listen to the candid advice of his darling wife.
Aisha Buhari was born on February 17, 1971 in Adamawa State, Northeastern Nigeria. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Administration from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), and a master’s degree in International Affairs and Strategic Studies from the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna. She obtained a diploma in Beauty Therapy from the Carlton Institute of Beau- ty Therapy, Windsor, United Kingdom. She caps it up with a post-graduate diploma in Cosmetology and Beauty from Academy Esthetique Beauty Institute of France. On December 2, 1989, she married Muhammadu Buhari, who had five children from a previous marriage to Safinatu Yusuf. Aisha and Muhammadu Buhari have five children together and one grandchild.