READ THE FOLLOWING AND COMMENT:
<Its and extraction>
First
of all, Muhammadu Buhari had an all male cabinet at the very time when the
world had very good examples of the sterling nature of females in power
including the Iron Lady herself, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher of The United Kingdom
and the phenomenal Indira Gandhi of India.
Does it mean that neither of these
women could inspire Buhari to have included even one woman in his cabinet?
All his ministers and advisers, his
Military Governors and the ambassadors he appointed were men!
And to rub salt to injury, Buhari is
promising to close down the office of the First Lady if he is elected! In the
year 2015! Are we moving forward or backward?
President Jonathan has been
campaigning and everybody sees his wife by his side. If I may ask, where was
Mrs. Buhari until recently presented for political purposes?
Is she wrapped up in seclusion
somewhere? Does her complete isolation from the public personae and campaigns
of her husband not indicate that he still does not think that women have a role
to play in government even if if is ceremonial?
And nobody should tell me that it is
unislamic to honour your wife with a visible place by your side.
Is Buhari more Muslim than the
people of Indonesia who elected a woman to head their government in the person
of Megawati Sukarnoputri?
Is Buhari more Muslim than the people
of Pakistan who elected a woman to lead them in the person of the late Benazir
Bhutto?
I deliberately cited Indonesia and
Pakistan because they are the largest and second largest Muslim nations in the
world with deep Islamic traditions that date back to centuries.
If these nations can entrust women
with political power at the highest levels, why should Buhari tend to put women
in the background?
I dare say that it has not escaped
the attention of Mrs. Buhari that President Goodluck Jonathan has appointed
more women into his cabinet and into other high positions than any other
government before his.
Again, I suspect that Mrs. Buhari is
not unaware of the respect and recognition which the President accords his
wife, Dame Patience Jonathan.
Seeing how a secure man treats his
wife and seeing how she has been relegated not just to the background, but to
obscurity, I have a strong feeling that Mrs. Buhari will not vote for her
husband. Methinks President Jonathan would score an unexpected vote from the
Buhari household.
I mean, take a look at the campaign
rallies of the All Progressive Congress. How many women do we see in prominent
positions? Not many or not at all.
Look at the report we are reading
from Taraba. On Christmas Day, we were awaken with the headline ‘Taraba: Buhari
rejects female APC guber candidate’.
From the story, we understand that
General Buhari was not comfortable with the candidacy of Senator Aisha Jumai
Alhassan who made history as the first woman to win a gubernatorial ticket on a
major party and with a landslide at that.
As a former gubernatorial candidate,
I know what it takes to win a party primary for the gubernatorial ticket. It is
a heavy weight fight in which the winner must defeat several heavy weights.
After Senator Aisha Jumai Alhassan
performed this feat, instead of being congratulated, she met with rejection
from Buhari. It only goes to show how deep seated his prejudices against women
is.
If there were ever any doubts as to
the role Buhari expects from women that story wipes it away.
If the women of Nigeria want to undo
whatever gains they have made in the last four years where they have had 12
women appointed as ministers, in which they finally had entry into the Nigerian
Defense Academy courtesy of an Executive Order issued by President
Jonathan and the first female Chief Justice of Nigeria appointed
under President Jonathan, they may go ahead and vote for Buhari.
But before they do so, they better
ask their husbands to buy air conditioners for their kitchens because they may
be spending the next four years there.
Chief(Dr.) Obasi Akpa Obasi is a
former Gubernatorial candidate of the Action Congress in Ebonyi state.
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