Turai As A Scapegoat

Aonduna Tondu

Turai Yar’Adua, wife of Nigeria’s ailing president, has for some time now become the favourite punching bag of her husband’s critics and political foes alike. Sadly, the political pugilism directed against her persona has tended to assume a frightening mystification, to the extent that what comes across is a pathetic caricature that invariably minimizes the tragedy we as a nation are confronted with today while at the same time dangerously shifting the emphasis of what should be our collective concerns.

The various discourses around Nigeria’s First Lady paint the picture of a greedy, overbearing and manipulative woman – a larger-than-life figure who has ruthlessly and remorselessly sought to take advantage of her espousal proximity to Mr. President to exert the kind of executive authority that is the ‘chasse gardée’ or exclusive preserve of that symbol of the people’s sovereignty. Yet, other unflattering exposés vainly harp on the supposed pretentiousness of a female whose rural and cultural provenance notwithstanding, has articulated power and its trappings irresponsibly and vindictively by putting her personal and selfish considerations over and above the national interest. In short, through these narratives, what we are being told is that Turai bears the greater part of the responsibility for the current grim state of the nation. Nothing can be further from the truth!

By making Turai the ultimate scapegoat for the ills of our society today, those peddling this obviously obnoxious tale want to relocate the theatre of guilt and by so doing, seek to perpetuate the status quo, consciously or unconsciously. And that seems to be what we are seeing since the civilian coup that illegally, if temporarily, enthroned Jonathan as ‘acting president’.

A more sober way of looking at Mrs. Yar'Adua is that she was forced by very peculiar circumstances to recreate and sustain an aura of presidential significance, if not legitimacy, around the first family, including herself, of course. Surely, this does not absolve her of any perceived failings but it requires of us to cast our minds back to the original sin, so to speak, that is the illegal imposition, in 2007, of the Yar'Adua/Jonathan 'twins' on the nation by the ex-tyrant, Obasanjo. My readers are advised to avail themselves of my essay on this unfortunate chapter of our history. It bears the title “Contemplating Nigeria Without Yar’Adua and Jonathan” ( By Aonduna Tondu, NVS ). In that article, amongst other items, I challenged Nigerians to take to the streets to help upturn the illegitimate Yar’Adua suzerainty which Obasanjo had inflicted on the country. Obviously, my pleas and those of other discerning citizens did fall on deaf ears. Before the 2007 electoral brigandage, the Ota tin god rigged himself back to Aso Rock in 2003.

Still going back to our recent past, in 1999, to be precise, a retreating and discredited military cabal comprising some of the most anti-people elements did connive with its civilian allies to foist an anti-democratic entity on the country.

In all the cited instances, the people did nothing. Some even applauded while hiding behind irrelevant excuses. Remarkably also, even the NADECO pro-democracy uprising that followed the annulment of the 1993 presidential election by the former dictator, Babangida, was fatally flawed due to the unprincipled determination on the part of its representatives to accord a sectarian bent to its advocacy.

On February 9, 2010, it is worth noting that an illegal civilian coup was perpetrated with the active assistance of, amongst others, the soi-disant pro-democracy outfits and their representatives in the likes of what I have already painfully but aptly described as a troubling enigma of contradiction and hypocrisy – Wole Soyinka. After carefully observing Soyinka’s political activism in the last decade of post-military hegemony in particular, one is compelled to draw the unsettling conclusion that his previous achievements notwithstanding, the man has, at critical moments, been a tacit ally of reactionary forces. His support of Obasanjo in the 2003 electoral debacle is a case in point.

So, what we have right now, with or without Yar'Adua and Turai, is the untenable status quo. This means the upholding of the PDP's corrupt stranglehold on the nation, thanks, in part, to the combined efforts of an abdicating pro-democracy rabble as represented by Soyinka, the gerontocratic fraternity featuring some of Nigeria's most incompetent former rulers and the opportunistic and prebendal political class. One must mention, of course, the role of an irresponsible and sedentary populace.

It goes without saying that this state of affairs does serve the interests of those obsessed with instantly and permanently getting rid of Yar’Adua, for selfish and parochial reasons, through the demonization of his wife. Nigerians in their majority can’t ignore the alarming reports to the effect that key acolytes of the ancien régime’s potentate have characteristically been popping champagne and basically engaging in hedonistic revelries in Dubai and other exotic locations as a sign of what they perceive as their return to political relevance with the Jonathan power grab of February 9.

Now, Turai should not be made a convenient scapegoat for our collective spinelessness and the lack of moral will to rise and defend the common good. Today, that common good may be at risk more than ever before, what with the incestuous and worrisome reunion between Jonathan and his godfather, the former imperial ruler of Aso Rock and his confederates. It is said that Jonathan is increasingly relying on advice from his mentor and political master as can be seen in the acting president’s desperate attempts at seeking a dubious legitimacy by playing host to discredited foreign rulers like the mendacious Tony Blair of Britain and America’s administrative disaster called George Bush Jnr.

Considered by many as an inspiring, loyal and trusted wife of a national leader in a difficult environment where rank opportunism and a paucity of redeeming values are the order of the day, Turai is just a footnote, not the main story. This means that the Jonathan interregnum cannot be seen as an occasion for business as usual by way of partisan struggles for supremacy. Those who have worked toward the status quo and seem contended with the outcome should be reminded that this is not what the citizenry bargained for. Merely substituting an ailing PDP figure head with another cannot be said to be a viable option. To state it in simple’ turenchi’, the misguided attempts aimed at dressing illegitimacy and impunity in borrowed robes of efficiency and a new beginning cannot be taken on their face value. Again, for Jonathan to be taken seriously, he must rid himself of his political ancestor’s ghastly ghost and what it has come to represent in the present scheme of things. He should transcend his illegitimacy and truly help restore the sovereign will of the people to choose their representatives. And thereafter, it will be immaterial whether or not ‘Acting President’ Jonathan disappears into oblivion. At least, he will have done what is expected of him. No big deal !

Aonduna Tondu ( tondua@yahoo.com )