By Ishaya Ibrahim
Aisha Buhari is not your typical First Lady.
Until the 2015 election, little was known about her. President Muhammadu Buhari had prowl the campaign trail alone.
But in 2015 when the campaign looks serious, she hoped on, a 44 year old woman with good looks. The attraction brought many on board.
Your typical First Lady may keep the facade when things are not well. Not Aisha. She is a table shaker, blunt and assertive.
She does not believe in diplomatic niceties to wash dirty home laundry in public. She says it as it is.
In August 2018, few months to the election, she threatened to withdraw her support for her husband re-election bid if those that had hijacked his government didn’t give way, the jackals and the baboons, she called them.
“I will not go out and campaign again and ask any woman to vote like I did before. I will never do it again,” she had said.
But reason prevailed. She participated in the campaign vigorously. Buhari won a re-election. But she has not ceased to throw bombs.
How does she manage to lop a bomb against the Villa and return to the same Villa to play the dear wife to the Villa landlord?
In a BBC interview in October 2016, Aisha said her husband’s government had been hijacked by a “few people”, and they made most of the appointments. It was a telling indictment that the head of state was governing by proxy.
“The president does not know 45 out of 50 of the people he appointed and I don’t know them either despite being his wife of 27 years.”
Even though her husband dismissed her remark as the rant of a woman who belongs to the kitchen and the ‘other room’, he however reflected her concern in the next appointments he made after he won a re-election.
“The last cabinet which I headed, most of them, the majority of them I didn’t know them. I had to accept the names and recommendations from the party and other individuals….
“But, this time around I’m going to be quiet me – me in the sense that I will pick people I personally know,” Buhari said to the leadership of the National Assembly in June while explaining the delay in forwarding the list of cabinet nominees to them.
For Aisha, it was like the fighting gloves are permanently on.
Aso Villa Clinic managers got a bit of her punches when she visited the facility and found that it only existed in name.
“A few weeks ago, I was sick. They advised me to take the first flight out to London (her husband’s favourite destination for medical checks). I refused to go. I said I must be treated in Nigeria because there is a budget for an assigned clinic to take care of us. If the budget is N100 million, we need to know how the budget is spent.
“Along the line, I insisted they call Aso Clinic to find out if the X-ray machine was working. They said it was not working. They didn’t know I was the one that was supposed to be in that hospital at that very time.
“I had to go to a hospital that was established by foreigners 100 per cent.” she said.
But in all her battles at the Villa, one opponent has been more problematic – Mamman Daura. Even for the First Lady, this opponent is formidable.
On December 11, Aisha came out blazing against Mamman Daura in a battle that suggests the President must either take a side or expect more canisters.
She said in a press statement. “We all remember that the chief proponent (Mamman Daura) appropriated to himself and his family a part of the Presidential Villa, where he stayed for almost 4 years and when the time came for him to leave, he orchestrated and invaded my family’s privacy through a video circulated by Mamman’s Daughter, Fatima, the public was given the impression that on arrival into the country I was locked out of the villa by Mr. President.
“Garba Shehu as Villa Spokesperson, knew the truth and had the responsibility to set the records straight, but because his allegiance is somewhere else and his loyalty misplaced, he deliberately refused to clear the air and speak for the President who appointed him in the first place,” she said.
She insisted that Garba Shehu must resign because he allied himself with Mamman Daura.
Shehu, however, has ignored the warning. He even asserted his role as spokesman for the president same day by issuing a press statement on a subject which his colleague, Femi Adesina, had earlier responded to.
Who then is this Mamman Daura? TheNiche had interviewed Second Republic lawmaker in June 2016, and he revealed to us the kind of power the man wields.
“Mamman Daura is a nephew to Buhari, even though the (age) difference between them is about three years. His father is an elder brother to Buhari .
“Abba Kyari was brought up by Mamman Daura. His father left him with Mamman Daura to go to Borno, his original state where he was a village head. And for all intents and purposes, he is a son of Mamman Daura. He is now the chief of staff to Buhari. His name is Abba Kyari.
“Then [Kabir Daura] the personal assistant to Buhari himself, is the son of Mamman Daura.
“And the girl [Aisha Abubakar] who was picked out of nowhere from Sokoto. She is not a member of the APC. She has nothing to do with anybody. She was picked and made a minister by Mamman Daura and Buhari because her mother is the younger sister of Mamman Daura’s wife.
“Mamman Daura virtually runs the government. He has a veto power. There have been instances when Buhari gave written approval for things to be done, and that man went and stymied, threw the paper away.
“He has become such a tyrant in the Presidency,” Junaid said.
Now that the battle is on the street, will the President act to keep the peace in his home?
