PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMAD HARUNA

PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMAD HARUNA

First Ladies and All That

While the nation held its breadth last Saturday for the outcome of the petition against Senate President, David Mark, as the representative of Benue South Senatorial District, hundreds of Nigerians from all walks of life gathered inside the huge Ladi Kwali Hall of Sharaton Hotel and Towers, Abuja, for the public presentation of a book on arguably the most accomplished First Lady this country has produced. I am talking about Justice (Mrs.) Fati Lami Abubakar, a senior judge in the Niger State High Court and wife of former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar.

I did not have the priviledge of reading the book before its public presentation and still haven’t read it. So this piece is not a review of the book. Rather it is a sketchy attempt at situating the book in the historical context of the phenomenon of First Ladyism in Nigeria.

If the size and quality of the audience at the presentation is anything to go by then it can be said that Justice Fati Abubakar still enjoys tremendous public goodwill long after her 11-month tenure as Nigeria’s First Lady came to an end on May 29, 1999. This says a lot about the style and substance of her tenure for, except for the wives of General Murtala Mohammed and Chief Ernest Sonekan, Justice Fati Abubakar’s tenure has been the shortest so far.

I don’t know how much of her style and substance as Nigeria’s First Lady the book was able to capture. Presumably, it has captured the honour and dignity she brought to bear on the office going by its title – HONOUR & DIGNITY PERSONIFIED - and listening to its review by Professor Zainab Alikali, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Nassarawa State University. If these two virtues alone are among those captured by the book’s author, Mrs. Maimuna Aminu Abubakar, who happened to be the subject’s “little kishiya” - to use her own words - as the wife of a younger brother of General Abubakar and herself a chief magistrate, the book would be worth reading, especially by the wives of our political leaders.

I suspect, however, that book has also captured one more virtue which I observed in Justice Abubakar in my eight-odd months as her husband’s chief press secretary. This was her sense of humility. Perhaps the difference was that I was a bit player in her husband’s regime, and so I got to know her at closer quarters than previous First Ladies, but in my view she has been the most humble of the country’s First Ladies, bar the wives of President Shehu Shagari who were apparently content to stay completely away from the public eye.

This humility, I think is the most critical of the virtues she brought to bear on her office as First Lady. It is the most critical because humility teaches one how to avoid the abuse and arrogance of power. In her own case Justice Abubakar knew where to draw the line between affairs of her heart and matters of state, something which is very difficult to achieve once you are up there and which several of the country’s First Ladies in recent times never even tried to.

This difficult balance between affairs of the heart and matters of state lies at the very heart of the controversy that has surrounded the office of the country’s First Lady – and by extension of First Ladies at other levels of government – since Mrs. Mariam Babangida first raised its profile to its highest level to date a little under 23 years ago.

Before Mariam we had, of course, Flora, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe’s wife as the country’s first president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. She played mostly the ceremonial role of hosting receptions by her husband.

We also had Victoria, Gowon’s wife and so far the longest serving First Lady. Victoria enjoyed a high but non-controversial profile. Before Victoria, we had yet another Victoria, General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi’s wife. However, her husband’s tenure as the country’s first military ruler was too brief and too tense for her to have made much impact.

After Gowon’s wife we had Ajoke, General Murtala Mohammad’s wife. Her husband’s tenure was perhaps the country’s single most eventful period but the way it was cut short in a hail of gun-fire from a bunch of murderous coupists on that tragic morning of February 13, 1976, pushed her deep into the background.

Murtala’s successor, General Olusegun Obasanjo, had so many wives none of them really came to limelight. President Shehu Shagari whom he handed over to was your typical Muslim conservative who believed the place of a woman is to serve her God quietly and maintain the integrity of the home front. As a result most Nigerians never even heard of their names much less know what they looked like.

Next was General Muhammadu Buhari’s wife, the late Safina. Like Victoria before her she had a high enough public profile, but again like Victoria, it was mostly for essentially humanitarian work that had little to do with matters of state.

And then Mariam, Babangida’s wife, came along and transformed the face of a First Ladyism in a way no one before or after her has done. Not only did she bring glamour into the office like no one before her had done, she tried to mix the affairs of her heart with matters of state.

Predictably that prompted legal activists like Chief Gani Fawahinmi to denounce her attempt to fund her humanitarian projects from state coffers because she happened to be the president’s wife. Since then nothing about the office has ever been the same as before.

The next significant First Lady after General Babangida stepped aside in August 1993 was another Maryam, this time spelt with a y. (Chief Ernest Sonekan, the interim head of state after Babangida, was in office for only three months, too brief for his wife to have conceived any pet project let alone implement it). Maryam tried to out do her namesake in shaping and implementing public policy especially on women affairs and childcare. I don’t recall that any one tried to check or stop her until death tragically snatched her husband away in June 1998.

That death resulted in the fortuitous elevation of General Abubakar – he was to get the sack on the very day he got the country’s top job - to the leadership of the country and thus to his wife of many decades becoming the country’s First Lady. As a senior judge in her native Niger State, she became the most literate First Lady in the country’s history. This may be one reason for the humility she brought to her office. As a highly literate First Lady she suffered no complex and therefore had no need to prove anything to any one.

Since her departure as First Lady, we have had, first, Stella, one of Obasanjo’s many wives and now, Turai, President Umaru Yaradua’s wife, as First Ladies. Stella became First Lady in defiance of her husband’s firm promise that in his reincarnation as elected president in 1999 he would not allow his wife manage any thing beyond the home front. Because of her tragic death following an unsuccessful cosmetic surgery abroad, we may never know how she was able to defy her husband and bring back to her office as First Lady much of the glamour and power the office lost after the reign of Mariam, Babangida’s wife.

Turai, President Yaradua’s wife appears to enjoy the power, if not the glamour, Maryam Abacha’s wife and Stella brought back to the office after Justice Fati Abubakar’s relatively quiet tenure, much to the chagrin of most people in her immediate social environment where women who appear to wield undue influence over their husbands are generally viewed with deep suspicion.

So far Justice Abubakar is the only First Lady of the country to have had a book written about her AFTER her husband has quit office. I am told the book took so long in coming because she refused to cooperate with its author and those behind it in her firm belief that being the wife of a president is more of an accident than anything else and is therefore really nothing to celebrate.

As the Special Guest of Honour at the book launch, Turai’s presence was of course critical to the success of the occasion. It would be interesting to see who would like to write about her after her husband would have left office and how much crowd the book’s launch would pull.