IN DEFENCE OF AISHA BUHARI, By JESUTEGA ONOKPASA

I was quite astounded when it first occurred to me that Aisha Buhari might actually be the most differentiated First Lady in the entire history of world politics. I am not joking, howsoever exaggerating or in any way attempting to flatter her. Apart from being a lawyer, I have also been a lifelong student and avid fan of history and follower of international affairs and, not even anywhere in Europe or America can I recall the spouse of a ruler publicly taking the side of the masses against her husband’s administration as Mrs Buhari has often done as First Lady.

Indeed, I cannot also recall a queen or similar personage, at any time in history, who demonstrated similar forthrightness and love for the common people against what would be deemed to be her own best political self-interest! That is not just what Aisha Buhari did, that is what absolutely no Nigerian First Lady, stateside or nationwide, ever does!

History, of course, is revealed slowly but with eventually true and incontrovertible verdicts on those it chooses to remember. I would project that Aisha Buhari will never be forgotten in history and I believe that same history will remember her most kindly. Indeed, Mrs Buhari is a woman I feel I have very good reason to be very proud of, and I believe I am not the only one. I hope that when her full and concise biography is finally written, it prominently records for posterity, the towering truths about her service to the people of this country.

Ours happens to be very much a society chronically afflicted with amnesia, indeed one wherein heroes are regularly vilified and villains eagerly deified. It is not at all surprising that some clearly misguided and intellectually inadequate urchin and product of that paradigm would seek to victimise an innocent woman and cast wholly unfounded and quite inappropriate aspersions on her.

While the gorilla budding in the youngster was quick to pounce on a woman with absolutely no hand in whatever grievances he has against the government, he completely forgot that the number one ally of the poor people of this country he was purporting to be speaking for is arguably none other than Mrs Buhari, herself, the only First Lady I can recall to have ever upbraided her own husband’s government! But that is injustice and unfairness for you, even as it takes expression in transferred aggression, a trait quite common amongst all humans but rather particularly virulent in the Nigerian.

There are things that might be said against the Muhammadu Buhari administration but it is his administration, and, most certainly neither that of his wife nor of his children who have absolutely no case to answer before God, not to talk of man. Yet, I would say there are things also to be said for President Buhari, indeed a quantum of verifiable achievements to speak for him against a backdrop of the most onerous conditions in which to deliver on democratic governance.

Whereas bashing Buhari has become quite fashionable amongst politicians who have no better records to present for themselves, truth is if you were to bring an Abraham Lincoln or a Nelson Mandela and were then to even add to either or, indeed both, for that matter, a Barack Obama and a Lee Kuan Yew, you would still have a great many problems to solve in a Nigeria in which a myriad of national issues were allowed to pile up unattended for over half a century!

Whatever anyone chooses to make of President Buhari’s rule, Aisha is most certainly not to blame for anything anyone is unsatisfied with. Unfortunately, those who chose to go after the clearly badly brought up youngster who apparently feels entitled to disparage the mother of his age mates, have only ended up exhibiting a most bizarre species of glaring incompetence.

If I had been an aide to President Goodluck Jonathan, I would have physically restrained him from increasing fuel price on New Year’s Day of all days, thereby demarketing himself before a hitherto adoring nation! Yet he had an army of aides and none of them was apparently sensible enough to tell him fuel price hike cannot possibly be a President’s New Year’s gift to his country and talk him out of the biggest mistake of his political career.

But then, this is Nigeria where absolutely anyone can get a job, especially one they cannot deliver on. If you are not careful with your aides they will destroy you.

I would speculate that Mrs Buhari must have felt rather quite hurt, and naturally so, by the young man’s entirely unfair, most uncouth and completely out of line remark. Then some overzealous misfit took it upon himself to go grab this complete nonentity of a totally obscure social media bully, thus only ending up lending him greater clout and rendering the status of a cause celebre to what everyone would have forgotten in a day or two! This is how woefully incompetent and pathetically unimaginative some of the people we often end up having around us can be.

Remanding the fellow in prison custody is just yet another layer added to this completely needless and most pointless approach to an issue that was best totally ignored in the first place. Frankly, if I would had ever bothered to engage the young man, it would have been to educate him on the inhumaneness of attacking an innocent woman, especially one fully on the side of the poor. Those who have been idiotic enough to make a mountain out of a total non-issue they should have treated with far more tact should immediately and quietly release their fellow clown they have somehow managed to make into a celebrity, take full responsibility for their stupidity and leave Mrs Buhari entirely out of their shenanigans.

Aisha Buhari is our hero, an Amazon and dear to the hearts of millions of conscientious people across this country. Indeed, the emerging narratives around this wholly unfortunate episode have been quite unkind, and, most unfairly so, to her.

This has clearly been yet another case of rather nitwitted sycophants mishandling an issue for a truly good-natured and kindhearted human being. Aisha Buhari is selfevidently a well brought up woman, a citizen per excellence, a devoted wife, an excellent mother and a most uncommon First Lady.

No one will succeed in demonizing Mrs Buhari for she will be vindicated by God, her Creator. Aisha Buhari is most certainly not a Marie Antoinette nor is she anything remotely like Imelda Marcos. She is not Mrs Abacha – she is Mrs Buhari and she is a true child of God. She is our Aisha and our Queen of Hearts.

Onokpasa, a lawyer and member, All Progressives Congress, APC, Presidential Campaign Council, writes from Abuja.

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