First Lady Aisha Buhari doesn’t speak out so often. However, when she does, she sets the whole place on fire.
Like today. In a subtle rant delivered for maximum impact on Friday, January 19, 2018, Mrs. Buhari reposted video links wherein the speakers were taking President Muhammadu Buhari and the administration he heads, to the cleaners.
In one of the videos shared by Aisha on her Instagram and Twitter pages, Senator Isah Misau can be heard calling the president a lame duck.
“It’s as if he’s not in charge. It’s as if some people are the ones in charge of this country. Even the DG NIA that we are talking about, they said some people in the cabal, they are the ones that appointed that person to be there”, Misau said.
Cabal
If that sounds eerily familiar, that’s because it is. In October of 2016, Mrs Buhari told the BBC that her husband is being held hostage by a cabal.
“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 of 27 years,” Aisha Buhari lamented.
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“Some people are sitting down in their homes folding their arms only for them to be called to come and head an agency or a ministerial position,” she added.
When asked to mention names of those who have hijacked the Buhari administration, she said: “You will know them if you watch television.”
On her husband’s second term bid at the time, Mrs. Buhari had retorted: “He is yet to tell me, but 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”.
Validation?
While this could have been dismissed as a threat in 2016, Aisha’s reposts of videos critical of her husband, only months before her husband’s first term is up, should carry some weight and pack a few punches.
The First Lady also shared a video where Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, ever critical of the Buhari administration, says: “Nigeria is becoming a lawless country. We either have a government or we don’t. We either have security agencies or we don’t. We either believe in the sanctity of life and property or we don’t”.
Between Senators Misau and Ben Bruce’s comments are the same sticks the opposition and every other disenchanted Nigerian out there, has been lashing on the back of Buhari and the administration he heads.
With her social media reposts, Aisha Buhari may just be telling the rest of the world that the senators are only re-enforcing and validating her views of two years before. She may just be telling us that she’s given up on her husband’s administration; that she can’t see any ray of light at the end of what has been a dark tunnel.
Or she may just be telling us that she can’t see her husband turning this around.
And as the president’s wife, Aisha is telling us a lot through her social media shares and comments. The rest of the country would be wrong to dismiss her stance with a wave of the hand.
The last time she dared, she was sent to the other room. It remains to be seen what room she ends up next.
