NIGERIAN NEWS REPORTERS: Buhari’s Wife Will Vote for Jonathan

As a father of five daughters, whenever I think
of Muhammadu Buhari, what comes to my
mind is a regime that was completely
insensitive to the feminine gender.
First of all, Muhammadu Buhari had an all
male cabinet at the very time when the world
had very good examples of the sterling nature
of females in power including the Iron Lady
herself, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher of The United
Kingdom and the phenomenal Indira Gandhi of
India.
Does it mean that neither of these women
could inspire Buhari to have included even
one woman in his cabinet?
All his ministers and advisers, his Military
Governors and the ambassadors he appointed
were men!
And to rub salt to injury, Buhari is promising
to close down the office of the First Lady if he
is elected! In the year 2015! Are we moving
forward or backward?
President Jonathan has been campaigning
and everybody sees his wife by his side. If I
may ask, where was Mrs. Buhari until recently
presented for political purposes?
Is she wrapped up in seclusion somewhere?
Does her complete isolation from the public
personae and campaigns of her husband not
indicate that he still does not think that
women have a role to play in government even
if if is ceremonial?
And nobody should tell me that it is unislamic
to honour your wife with a visible place by
your side.
Is Buhari more Muslim than the people of
Indonesia who elected a woman to head their
government in the person of Megawati
Sukarnoputri?
Is Buhari more Muslim than the people of
Pakistan who elected a woman to lead them in
the person of the late Benazir Bhutto?
I deliberately cited Indonesia and Pakistan
because they are the largest and second
largest Muslim nations in the world with deep
Islamic traditions that date back to centuries.
If these nations can entrust women with
political power at the highest levels, why
should Buhari tend to put women in the
background?
I dare say that it has not escaped the
attention of Mrs. Buhari that President
Goodluck Jonathan has appointed more
women into his cabinet and into other high
positions than any other government before
his.
Again, I suspect that Mrs. Buhari is not
unaware of the respect and recognition which
the President accords his wife, Dame Patience
Jonathan.
Seeing how a secure man treats his wife and
seeing how she has been relegated not just to
the background, but to obscurity, I have a
strong feeling that Mrs. Buhari will not vote
for her husband. Methinks President Jonathan
would score an unexpected vote from the
Buhari household.
I mean, take a look at the campaign rallies of
the All Progressive Congress. How many
women do we see in prominent positions? Not
many or not at all.
Look at the report we are reading from
Taraba. On Christmas Day, we were awaken
with the headline ‘Taraba: Buhari rejects
female APC guber candidate’.
From the story, we understand that General
Buhari was not comfortable with the
candidacy of Senator Aisha Jumai Alhassan
who made history as the first woman to win a
gubernatorial ticket on a major party and with
a landslide at that.
As a former gubernatorial candidate, I know
what it takes to win a party primary for the
gubernatorial ticket. It is a heavy weight fight
in which the winner must defeat several heavy
weights.
After Senator Aisha Jumai Alhassan
performed this feat, instead of being
congratulated, she met with rejection from
Buhari. It only goes to show how deep seated
his prejudices against women is.
If there were ever any doubts as to the role
Buhari expects from women that story wipes it
away.
If the women of Nigeria want to undo
whatever gains they have made in the last
four years where they have had 12 women
appointed as ministers, in which they finally
had entry into the Nigerian Defense Academy
courtesy of an Executive Order issued by
President Jonathan and the first female
Chief Justice of Nigeria appointed under
President Jonathan, they may go ahead and
vote for Buhari.
But before they do so, they better ask their
husbands to buy air conditioners for their
kitchens because they may be spending the
next four years there.