The she-president

As usual, her televised outing, which has since gone viral on the internet with several creative montages and remixes — turned out to be a poorly dramatised rehash of RB Sheridan’s Mrs Malaprop in the celebrated play, The Rivals – or even a second-rate imitation of the inimitable Chief Zebrudaya. As the chorus of side-kicks […]

As usual, her televised outing, which has since gone viral on the internet with several creative montages and remixes — turned out to be a poorly dramatised rehash of RB Sheridan’s Mrs Malaprop in the celebrated play, The Rivals – or even a second-rate imitation of the inimitable Chief Zebrudaya.
As the chorus of side-kicks egged her on, I felt a deep sorrow in the depths of my being. Some honest presidential aide ought to have prevailed on the woman not to attempt humiliating the victims and their political leaders. It was clear that Mrs Jonathan took all the demonstrations going on all over the country as a direct affront against her husband. And she was determined to put an end to it her own way.
Unfortunately her way was so crude and so pedestrian that it attracted international odium. Mrs Jonathan’s husband is the president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, but that does not make her the deputy-commander-in-chief. It is clear, though, that she sees herself as a She-President, an officer of state qualified to hold court and issue executive orders.
The wife of the Borno State governor did well not to attend Mrs Jonathan’s highly publicised meeting. From her utterances, one could deduce that Mrs Jonathan did not believe that the Borno girls were actually abducted; it was as if some people in the state government had conspired to hide the girls in order to give Jonathan a bad name. Now the names of the girls have been published; they are real people with names and faces! The way Mrs Jonathan acted out her role as convener, prosecution, witness, judge and chief mourner all at once showed that it would not be unfair to characterise her as delusional.
She was exercising the power she did not have. The fact that she is married to the president does not give her the right to convene a fact-finding meeting on national security. Many people have accused the president of incompetence in the way he has handled the whole abduction saga all along. I have no doubt that had I been in the same situation as Governor Shettima of Borno State, I would have instructed my wife not to attend the Abuja meeting, especially as Mrs Shetima had earlier, on April 28, been in Abuja to brief Mrs Jonathan on the efforts that Borno women under her leadership had been making since the abduction.
According to her media aide, before her meeting with Mrs Jonathan on April 28, Mrs Shettima had held a meeting with the coalition of women groups that included stakeholders of Chibok, officials of the National Council of Women’s Societies, wives of security chiefs in Borno State, the Christian Association of Nigeria, the Federation of Muslim Women, etc. All these had been discussed with Mrs Jonathan. So what was her enlarged village-style meeting and the lachrymose dramatisation supposed to achieve?
To compound an already disastrous media outing, one of the women representing parents of the abducted children, Mrs Nyadar Naomi Mutah, was arrested after Mrs Jonathan’s meeting and detained at the Asokoro police station. Eight hours later, she was whisked to the Force Headquarters of the police to answer questions apparently as a suspect in the ongoing terrorist investigation.  International journalists like Isha Sesay and Yvonne Ndenge and a group of local civil society activists quickly tweeted about Mrs Mutah’s ordeal. The police, caught between a rock and a hard place, released their catch and issued a statement denying the arrest but confirming that they had a “purely interactive and fact finding interview” with her. Trust the police to be efficient in arresting a defenceless housewife and mother while Boko Haram is carving out territory in one corner of Nigeria.
Truth be told, Mrs Jonathan’s conduct has further poisoned the waters. I had warned in at least four articles in the past that this cacophony of conspiracy theories will sabotage any meaningful attempt to rescue our girls and rout Boko Haram. Dr. Jonathan is the man we elected to preside over our country and  also command the armed forces. He cannot delegate that duty to his wife. We have seen how spouses of presidents elsewhere have identified with our struggle in dignified, civilised and touching manner. Compare that to Mrs Jonathan’s reported statement: “If you demonstrate and police do you anything, you are on your own.”
I can imagine those who prostrate their way through life, who nibble on carrion crumbs from the powers that be hurling insults at this writer. When a leader surrounds himself with such lickspittle, he doesn’t need any enemies.
Professor Moyo Okediji, an artistic tiger who has been proclaiming his tigritude for about four decades now, waxed poetic after watching Mrs Jonathan’s latest soap: “After watching this video/ My eyes clearly saw/ Why Nigeria is so downtrodden./ The lowest common denominator/  The most scantily intelligent/ The base, the deficient of polish/ Rule the great country of Nigeria./ How could such a crude and clueless soul/ Such an utterly classless and base character/ Such as this life-form/ Be the First Lady/  Of the most populous nation/ In Africa? The calibre of the First Lady/  Is the measure of the First Man”.
The ball is clearly in the court of the government. “Nigerian Government needs to understand what its responsibilities are and find the girls”, tweeted Malala Yousafzai who herself had been a victim of terrorism in her native Pakistan. Citizens will give their support but the president must provide leadership. So far, he hasn’t done well in that regard as the New York Times noted in its editorial: “Nigerian security forces apparently do not know where the girls are and the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, has been shockingly slow and inept at addressing this monstrous crime… Nigeria’s deeply troubled government cannot protect its people, attract investment and lead the country to its full potential if it cannot contain a virulent insurgency.”