The
photograph of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives
Congress, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), at the Lagos State
interdenominational thanksgiving service standing with his running mate,
Prof. Yemi Osinbajo; the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian
Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, and Governor Babatunde Fashola on
the front row says something about the APC presidential candidate.
There have been murmurs about his donning
a fez cap in church – that he is a Muslim disrespecting Christian
tradition. For me, his forgetting to take off his cap shows he has yet
to fully master the nuances and rituals of spaces he is treading for the
sake of his political ambition. If I were a Christian, I would pardon
him. What is not so easily dismissable in the photo-op, however, is much
more telling than his cap. In the picture, all the aforementioned men
had their wives by their sides except Buhari.
For a man who preaches “change” and
desires to rule a country made up of men and women in almost equal
halves, I wonder why he finds the anomaly of an “invisible wife”
wholesome. Interestingly, this is not the first time that Mrs Aisha
Buhari would be left behind in her husband’s aspiration.
In 2003, she was not prominent when he
lost to Olusegun Obasanjo’s “moonslide.” Four years later, not much had
changed though one could argue that his biggest opponent, Umaru
Yar’Adua, did not “use” his wife to campaign either. In 2011, when the
presidential election was on, I asked one of Buhari’s closest aides
where Mrs Buhari was and why she was practically unseen in her husband’s
various campaign efforts.
My query sprang from his image: If you
are being termed an ogre, furnish reasons why you could not be one. His
wife standing side-by-side with him would, I told the aide, soften his
unimpressible image.
This Buhari’s aide agreed with me that
his wife would be strategically invaluable for his persona. He said she
was coming to Lagos at that time and he would arrange press interviews
to introduce her to the public.
The aide called shortly after to say
Buhari was not sold to the idea. The aide was apologetic while
explaining why Buhari did not want his wife displayed like a ware even
in the heat of campaigns. He said Buhari himself could be rather
reticent; then, I should consider the religious factor, and that the
General was too disciplined for such and several etceteras. I wished him
the best and left it at that. By then, Patience Jonathan was
criss-crossing the country and canvassing votes for her husband in her
peculiar ways. Even though she was being mocked for her lack of
sophistication, she was winning some hearts because of her confidence.
By the time Buhari’s wife would surface
to sell the “softer” side of her husband; by the time people saw her on
TV expressing herself more articulately than the woman who would become
the First Lady, the election had practically been won and lost.
We were eventually availed her
credentials: she is not just a housewife who sits at home making “Fura
de Nunu” for her husband but a distinguished person in her own right. I
do not claim Buhari’s loss of the 2011 election had to do with his wife
but I think the belatedness of her emergence was a flaw.
If your own spouse is not at the
forefront of your dream, it could be interpreted in several ways. One is
that the woman does not believe in you enough, or that you do not have
faith in her abilities, or you are the alpha male who believes women
should be seen and not heard. Any which way, it does not look good.
After three defeats, you would expect
Buhari’s packaging to prominently include his wife. You would expect an
image of him as a loving husband and devoted husband to be part of his
virtues marketed to the public. You would have thought he would take his
wife with him for the photo-ops he is garnering in churches and
elsewhere. But no, she is still missing in the picture.
When Buhari had a photo-shoot recently
where he was dressed in the attire of various cultures of Nigeria, I
wondered why he was the only one in the picture. How does a man run for
president, take pictures of himself at a desk with the Nigerian flag in
the background but his partner of many years would be missing from the
shoots? They decked the General in suit and even had a picture of him
“hi-fiving” a child but there is none where his wife appears? Why? I do
not want to speculate on his private life as a married man but I think
those images portray him as a self-centred person who does not share
space.
When the picture of his family appeared,
eventually, we saw his wife, children, son-in-law and even grandchildren
but this time, Buhari himself was missing. I am still trying to wrap my
head around the kind of PR that misses the simple fact that Buhari
should have appeared in his family picture.
There are several reasons one can adduce
for Buhari and his wife’s photo hide-and-seek. One, the culture of
lovey-dovey is simply not him. Like the Igbo proverb that says a man
cannot learn to be left-handed in old age, I wager that this is a
left-handedness that Buhari has not learnt and is probably a far harder
lesson than removing his cap during a church service. Two, he probably
thinks being seen with a woman will detract from his famed militarist
discipline and Spartan image. He has done a lot of bending just to
project himself as a non-Islamic fundamentalist pan Nigerian statesman
but the woman aspect just does not resonate well with him – yet. Third,
the religion and culture Buhari has known all his life do gift a
second-class citizen status to women.
As if the invisible wife syndrome is not
grave enough, he even threatened to abolish the office of the First
Lady. Did he think the “First Ladyship” is all about frivolity and has
no symbolic and cultural value that redeems it? Did he consider the
implication of such a move for his image and ultimately, ambition? His
manifesto promises women empowerment but I wonder how he proposes to
empower Nigerian women when his own wife is tucked away from view.
True, Nigeria has had First Ladies who
have turned out as a real nuisance; Area Mothers who have their
aliterate fingers spotted in every political conundrum. The
classlessness of some, however, should not overshadow the beauty of
others who reinvented themselves and rose to the status of a genuine
First Lady.
http://www.punchng.com/opinion/viewpoint/where-is-mrs-buhari/
No comments:
Post a Comment