I heard this joke that was common among those critical of the PDP government led by Goodluck Jonathan. It went like this : A free campaign for the opposition candidate General Muhammadu Buhari, they said, was guaranteed any time the ruling party’s candidate, Jonathan was given a microphone to speak. Invariably, Buhari’s character will be attacked and maligned by a president convinced that his ‘youthful’ gait was a voter’s magnet. There was a time, in the course of the heated campaign, before the polls were shifted by six weeks, the nation’s number one citizen was “obsessed” with assailing the personality of his main challenger, Buhari. At every opportunity, he will take a swing at the lanky frame of the gangling General. These jibes didn’t stop even after both incumbent and challenger signed a peace accord to conduct an issue-based campaign. Not any more. The six-week reprieve has mercifully restored the swagger of the president. He is a little more confident now. From “ I will concede if I lose” to “I can’ t lose”, the 42 day extension has been good for the ruling party. The president has gotten his groove back.
I am, however, skeptical of his wife. The first lady of the federal republic of Nigeria, Dame Patience Jonathan hardly needs an introduction. She is the spouse of the president, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (Ph.D.) this makes her noticeable and important. Wives and mistresses in Africa or Australia married to or in liaison with important men of power or resource are influential. They derive their power by this association. Pillow talk is real. Smart and even dumb women make maximum use of this resource. Pillow talk is known to have ruined careers and advancement of men who have crossed the path of many a first lady.
Our current first lady fits this bill perfectly .She is even more. She doesn’t wait for pillow talk hour to flaunt her influence. Ask all those who crossed her path. I have this gnawing feeling that she fancies herself as “co-president”. This makes her a little above the Vice President. Have no illusion about this. Spouses of powerful men too emasculated to rein in their rampaging wives, are that important.
Until late president Umaru Musa Yar’adua passed away, Turai Yar’adua was that powerful. Assailed by debilitating health, Turai, as first lady then, annexed the power vacuum created by her sickly husband keeping his Vice, Goodluck Jonathan mostly in the dark. In those uncertain days, a cabal emerged led, arguably, by the former first lady herself taking crucial decisions for the state on behalf of her husband.
For sure, Turai wasn’t the first ‘first lady’ in history to act above a vice president. Early in the 20th century, a certain Edith Wilson, wife of Woodrow Wilson the 28th American president ran the country singly when her husband was battling a bout of influenza and fatigue. For a couple of weeks, she was in charge. Turai may well be the 21th century version of Edith Wilson.
At the state level, the power of the wives of governors is, simply put, awesome. Only three days ago I saw with my own “koro koro” eyes a commissioner down on his knees before the wife of the governor of Akwa Ibom state in full public glare.
Surely it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand why Dame Patience Jonathan ( in) impatience is bandying her “powers”. For the record, her husband is healthy-very healthy. His gym work out regularly aired on television show a man full of energy and zest for power. But still, Dame is powerful. Her boisterous personality makes her both visible and meddlesome. Her style is such that it prohibits obscurity. Walking in the shadow of her husband cramps her style.
Where her husband limits his attack on Buhari, she extends it to a whole region and its people in the name of campaign. Consider, if you may, her purported statement to the effect that some people (read northerners) sire children they can’t take of and promptly abandon them. Consider again, dismissing Buhari as “brain dead”. Consider again her insistence that her husband must serve two terms willy-nilly. I could go on. This first lady has done more harm to her husband’s bid for re-election than probably what the opposition has done to make the government look terrible.
This disposition, I dare say, makes “haters” like Wole Soyinka, master of literati and obscurantism to label her uncharitably. A well reported public reprimand by the famous Nobel laureate counseled the first lady to learn to be a “lady” first before acts “first lady”. He wasn’t done. He was not, still is not, impressed by the highfalutin sobriquet “first lady” prefacing Mrs Jonathan each time she is addressed by fawning aides and favour seekers. To him she is a ” mere domestic appendage of power”.
The reaction to his counsel incensed Soyinka further. He was almost inconsolable. He spoke, or more correctly, wrote more elevated grammar to sketch the character of Dame Patience. Excerpts from his press statement following their joint intervention along with Femi Falana in the then festering River states crisis read thus “…Oil is not the only marvel to emerge from the Delta swamps. There are also exotic creatures – mermaids, manatees, even mammy watas and hippopotami. However, unlike crude oil, which can be refined, you can extract a hippopotamus from the swamps, but you cannot take the swamp out of the hippopotamus….”
A lot of Nigerians familiar with the esoteric linguistic waffle of Soyinka inferred that the hippopotamus allusion was an obscurantist description of the first lady. It is uncharitable to allude that Patience Jonathan behaves like a hippo. It is uncharitable. It is crude even. But supporters of Governor Rotimi Amaechi will pointedly disagree. A hippo is plump and bulky set on short, stumpy legs. It is behaviorally aggressive. Soyinka may be right after all.
