It seems that under President Muhammadu Buhari, theatricals will never cease in our national life. Take, for example, the ongoing trial of Mr. Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters, which took an embarrassing turn December 6, 2019, and you don’t need further lecture that here is one government full of dramas – mostly tragicomedies, and grossly intolerant of political opponents and opposing views.
In one of such ugly scenes on national television and the online platform which went viral the other week, Sowore was being dragged by several men alleged to be operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS) in an Abuja courtroom. This was, to say the least, shocking and shameful.
Still theatricals, the President’s wife, Aisha Buhari, who insists on First Lady Lady official, is also on her own corner of the stage, wailing. Yes, you read it right, WAILING.
Going by what she has been spilling, it is clear that all is not well in the home of the Lion King (another interesting expression used by the spokesman to describe his boss). But that is only our business up to the point that the husband is assumed to be in charge of affairs that define our life as a nation.
And so, Aisha is accusing the other of her husband’s spokesperson, Mallam Garba Shehu, of aligning with her ‘arch-rival’, if you like – the one acclaimed to be the head of the cabal that call the shots in Aso Rock – Mamman Daura, in making pronouncements that the president has no knowledge of.
She alleged that scrapping of Office of the First Lady, which she, some months ago, took back in a Gestapo, nay, a very bold manner, was one of such pronouncements.
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But let’s get back to the matter of Sowore and the DSS. So, on this fateful December 6, 2019, Sowore, who was released the day before, after spending about 124 days in DSS detention, was manhandled in a show of shame right inside a courtroom, by men alleged to be of the DSS.
They were said to be planning a re-arrest for reasons that were not clear, and eventually did in the most controversial circumstance at the court premises, just a day after bail was finally granted. His legal team branded that action a disregard for the rule of law.
A couple of days after the show of shame, DSS denied being part of the disgraceful act.
“A critical look at the videos in circulation would convince any objective viewer that there was no DSS personnel during the entire period the Sowore crowd acted out its orchestrated drama,” DSS spokesman, Peter Afunanya, said in a statement.
This position was also echoed by another presidential aide, Lauretta Onochie, who accused Sowore of staging his supposed re-arrest to make the country’s secret police look bad.
Expectedly, Sowore’s lawyers have a different view, with the team leader, Femi Falana, wondering why the leader of the armed DSS operatives would apologise to the judge, Ijeoma Ojukwu, for the desecration of her court if they were not involved in the shameful act.
Sowore, who was also a candidate in the February 2019 presidential election, was first arrested on Aug. 3, 2019 for calling for nationwide protests tagged #RevolutionNow. He is charged with treasonable felony, money laundering, terrorism and plotting to overthrow the president.
Despite a judge granting him bail in October with the case ongoing, Sowore had been kept in DSS custody until his initial release, a day before the tragic drama in court. Protests clamoring for his release on bail earlier on Nov. 12 also resulted in a clash with the agency’s officers.
This latest incident, as rightly described, compounds growing concerns around deteriorating freedom of speech and the press in Nigeria, especially in the Buhari-led APC government.
It would be recalled that till date, the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Ibrahim el-Zakzakky and his wife are still in DSS detention for over three years in clear violation of court orders granting them bail and ordering their release.
Also to note is the case of the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), who has been held in detention since 2015, and in defiance of several court orders, including one by the ECOWAS appellate court, which declared his continued incarceration illegal.
And as a US Senator, Bob Menendez, who hails from New Jersey, where Sowore’s family is based, would describe the whole saga, Sowore’s rearrest is a “blatant miscarriage of justice symptomatic of closing political and media space in the country.
As rightly noted, “the incident compounds growing concerns around deteriorating freedom of speech and press rights in Nigeria, which follows worrying cases of detention of journalists over the past year, with outright disappearances of prominent government critics, in some cases.”
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Similarly, Amnesty International Nigeria in a statement shared on its social media page, said “The attempted abduction and eventual re-arrest of prisoners of conscience Omoyele Sowore and Olawale Bakare, including the desecration of the Nigerian judiciary by SSS officials tells a bigger story of impunity and flagrant disregard for the rule of law by the Nigerian government.”
And while we are still trying to deal with these serious national crises, the distraction from the First Lady comes to many as a big surprise. And come to think of it, isn’t it curious that usually when in the middle of national blunders by her husband’s government, Aisha will be bombarding us with personal issues that do not speak well of their other room?
In her latest release, as earlier stated, Aisha accuses Garba Shehu of stepping beyond his boundaries by taking orders she said are embarrassing to the president, from Mamman Daura and relaying same to the public as coming from the president.
“As spokesperson of the President, he (Garba Shehu) has the onerous responsibility of managing the image of the President and all the good works that he is executing in the country. Rather than face this responsibility squarely, he has shifted his loyalty from the President to others who have no stake in the cotract that the President signed with Nigerians on May 29, 2015 and 2019,” she alleged.
It would be recalled that after about two months away from the country, Aisha returned sometime in October in the middle of widespread rumours of plans to get for her husband another wife, and wailed very loudly, at least in the leaked video that went viral.
In the said video, she was heard fuming and complaining of being locked out of certain areas of the Villa that naturally should be occupied by members of her family. It was gathered she was talking to the daughter of Daura, whose family she was asking to pack out of the Villa.
So, in all of these, where is the president, one may be tempted to ask. What president just watch the country he rules and his household go up in such controversies and still remain as aloof to all of them?
Is our president just keen on flying in and out of the country at the slightest opportunity without rending words of assurance to the people he rules on burning issues of national importance?
Let’s not forget that Aisha had earlier in the life of her husband’s administration, lamented that the government had been hijacked by people who played little or no role in its making and had threatened that if the trend continued, she would not campaign for her husband’s re-election.
At the end though, Aisha was not only seen doing the 4+4 sign for Buhari’s re-election, she went further to campaign for the re-election of Kogi State governor, Yahaya Bello, mostly viewed as the worst governor in the country, so far.
She also recently pledged her support to the draconian hate speech bill, which majority of Nigerians are kicking against. Her style of whistle blowing, they argue, may not be far away from her personal interest and Nigerians should not be burdened with such at this most trying time in the history of the country.
With all the biting problems confronting the nation, it is unfair for long-suffering Nigerians to be laden with these constant episodes featuring the internal wrangling in the Villa.
The First Lady must have read about Moody’s negative rating of Nigeria, which obviously sent out unimpressive signals to foreign investors. If peradventure she hasn’t, she must have, at least, been told of the biting economic hardship being suffered by ordinary Nigerians.
What these long suffering Nigerians would rather love to hear right now is how government at these most difficult times is planning to fight hunger, poverty, diseases, insecurity among numerous vices ravaging the country.