Ime Akpan
In a no-holds-barred outburst, wife of the President, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, has blamed the lackluster performance of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration on two powerful persons in the administration.
Speaking at a National Women Leadership Summit organised by a political group, Project 4+4 for Buhari and Osinbajo 2019, in Abuja on Wednesday, Mrs. Buhari said her husband would have achieved a lot more than it had in three years if not “for two people in government who will never allow things to move fast.”
Mrs. Buhari who declined to name the people noted that Buhari’s achievements in the last three and a half years would have been accomplished in one year if the two people in the administration had not constituted themselves as hindrance for the speedy progress of governance.
“I am disappointed in men who rather than fight these two men will go to them in the night begging for favour,” she said.
When the political adviser to the president, Senator Babafemi Ojodu, signaled to her to move away from the topic, she said: “I have realised that Senator Babafemi Ojodu, special adviser on political matters to the president, and Dr. Hajo Sani, my aide, Sajo, and wife of the vice president, Mrs. Osinbajo, are not comfortable with me saying this and want me to confine myself to my prepared speech, but we must say the truth.”
She maintained that the two powerful figures are retrogressive elements preventing the government from moving forward.
It would be recalled that the president’s wife had, in 2016, alleged that the administration had been hijacked by a cabal in the presidency and threatened not to support her husband should he seek re-election in 2019.
Mrs. Buhari had claimed that her husband was surrounded by people he does not know and suggested that the government might have been hijacked from him, a sentiment shared by the senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki.
Aisha had told Naziru Mikailu from BBC Hausa Service that she might not support her husband’s reelection bid in 2019 if the situation persisted and he failed to carry out a cabinet shake up.
“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,” she told the interviewer
She said people who did not share the vision of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) were now appointed to top posts because of the influence a “few people” wield.
“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.”
Asked to name those who had hijacked the government, she refused, saying: “You will know them if you watch television.”
On whether the president was in charge, she said: “That is left for the people to decide.”
“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.”
But President Buhari, in his reaction, had laughed off his wife’s comment while talking to reporters in Germany where he was meeting with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
“I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room,” he said.
