Ordinarily, Aminu Adamu Muhammed, a student of the Federal University, Dutse in Jigawa state deserves no sympathy. Nor support. He is as cold-blooded and heartless as they come. He is also mindlessly violent. And he has no soul. Muhammed, it was said, gloated on social media over the execution in the name of religion of Deborah Samuel, a student somewhere in Sokoto state, by Islamic fundamentalists passing off as students. Deborah’s ‘crime’ was blasphemy of Prophet Muhammad. Those who killed her and burnt her remains were the accusers, the judges and the executioners. And those who supported Deborah’s gruesome murder are no less guilty. Agents of the state who have ensured that the murderers are still walking the streets of Nigeria free will, in the fulness of time, account for their evil deeds. In like manner, those who condemned the act and recanted as well as the many personages who lost their voices when they were most needed will get their due recompense.
If my faith did not teach about forgiveness and turning the other cheek I would have been minded to canvass that the apprentice Mullah, Muhammed, should have been left to rot in jail where he was dumped at the behest of Alhaja Aisha Buhari, wife of Nigeria’s President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari. But I have in my many years of pilgrimage this side of eternity come to learn that an eye for an eye could leave all of us blind and that we should not pay evil with evil.
The travails of Citizen Aminu Muhammed [Aminu subsequently] started when he tweeted out that Aisha Buhari, so-called Nigeria’s First Lady [to the best of my knowledge, the title and the office are not known to the laws of Nigeria] has added weight and grown fat by gorging on food provided through public funds.
The tweet which was in Hausa language read: “Su mama anchi kudin talakawa ankoshi” or something like that. Loosely translated it means that mama has eaten poor people’s money and is now full. Alhaja Aisha was incensed. She reportedly ordered agents of the secret police to immediately track and hunt down Aminu, abduct him and arraign him first in Aso Rock Villa court where she would preside over the preliminary hearings. The same secret police that has failed to apprehend hardened criminals and Islamist terrorists who broke free from Kuje-Abuja prisons some months ago, worked at the speed of light and hauled Aminu before her Majesty in the Villa.
To boot, the young man was tortured by the usually fiendish Nigerian security agents while the ‘First Lady’ was alleged to have joined in kicking Aminu. Alhaja Aisha must have enjoyed kicking Aminu who at 23 years is young enough to pass as her son until nemesis struck when she reportedly hurt her foot and so had to be ‘rushed’ to a hospital.
Apparently satisfied with the results they got by turning Aso Rock Villa into a Torture Chamber, the torturers who are maintained at the state expense moved the ‘accused’ to a secret detention facility. Then Citizen Aminu was secretly arraigned and an ‘Oluwole’ detention order was procured. From then on abuse of state power was in full display. As we said earlier, the office of the first lady is not known to law so what transpired between the abduction of Aminu in November and his freedom or ‘pardon’ last week was nothing short of the corruption of state power. You can only abuse that which was entrusted to you. The ‘power’ or ‘authority’ that Alhaja Aisha displayed in dealing with Aminu was the proceed of corruption.
In saner climes, the wife of the president should be a subject of a special study by psychologists and related experts. Her public personae since her husband became president in 2015 has been carefully curated. She is presented as kind hearted and as someone who cares for the less privileged. She was once reported to have said that her husband’s regime had been hijacked by elements who were not part of the many battles for the presidency and who did not share in their vision for Nigeria. Indeed, Alhaja Aisha had vowed that she would not campaign for the reelection of her husband in 2019 if something did not give. Nothing gave, at least, not publicly. Yet, she did not campaign against her husband and she is comfortably ensconced in the bowels of the presidential villa enjoying its perquisites and appurtenances. Her minders had ensured, except for once when she had a spat with the children of Buhari’s relation, Mamman Daura, in the Villa that she was presented as a caring woman and mother. Alhaja Aisha ensured that her aides leaked the video recording of the confrontation to the media with the narrative skewed to portray her as the victim of interlopers in her official residence. Not many Nigerians realised that that act was the making of a chameleon. She is not as genial as has been made of her. She is not what you see.
The Aminu ill-treatment is who Aisha Buhari actually is- ill-tempered, abusive and megalomaniac. Her lawyer in the abuse of court case she filed claiming defamation said Aisha elected to withdraw the charges because of pleas by well meaning Nigerians and other interventions. That was a lie. Nobody begged her. She was under intense condemnation from home and abroad for abuse of power and she faced an inevitable defeat and disgrace in court. These two factors explained why she backed down.
Assuming, but not conceding, that she was begged to climb down from her high horse, those who did the begging have done Nigeria a huge disservice. They have aborted an opportunity to expand the scope on settled cases of defamation and libel in Nigeria. A report had it that a team of forensic lawyers was ready to offer their legal services pro bono to Aminu should the case proceed to hearing. And the plot was to put Alhaja Aisha Buhari in the witness box and roast her with with questions on her assumed reputation. She alleged so she cannot use proxies to prove a case of defamation. She should thank the intelligence agents who may have alerted her of the plot to diminish and disgrace her in court.
In any case, the weakness of her defamation case has already been dissected by Prof Farooq Kperogi, a teacher and media studies specialist of Nigeria extraction who is based in the United States of America. In excerpts from his published intervention Kperogi wrote that “Adamu’s claim [in his tweet] that Aisha spends public money [kudin talakawa] is also factually accurate. Since 2015, Aisha and her husband have been sustained by public funds, known idiomatically as kudin talakawa in Hausa language. So there was nothing even remotely libelous about that.”
Kperogi further argued that “Aisha’s reputation wasn’t injured in any way by the publication of the opinion that implied that she has gained weight after pigging out on food bought from the public treasury. She suffered no reputational or material harm because of it. She hasn’t lost any contract because of it. She hasn’t been shunned by polite society because of it. Even if she suffered consequences because of it [she didn’t], it still isn’t libel because it isn’t false. In libel law, truth is always a defence. And in libel, opinions aren’t actionable. Harsh, vulgar insults aren’t actionable. Rhetorical hyperboles [such as what Adamu wrote about Aisha, or calling someone barawo, ole or bastard etc.] aren’t actionable. There are precedents in court judgements in Nigeria for my claims. So, there was no legal basis to sue the young man. None at all.”
Excellent as Kperogi’s analysis appears, he failed to factor in the worrisome disposition of some Nigerian judges including Yusuf Halilu in whose court Aminu would have been tried. Halilu showed his hand when releasing Aminu from illegal detention. He commended Alhaja Aisha Buhari for forgiving Aminu, a comment which could be construed to mean that the suspect was already guilty awaiting conviction. He proceeded to admonish parents to watch what their children are doing including a young adult like Aminu who is in the university. What a pathetic judge!