By Ochereome Nanna
IT is my considered opinion that the interviews which Madame Aisha Buhari granted criticising the composition of her husband’s government mainly with strangers was a “sting operation”. Apparently, while her husband was perfecting the armed invasion of the homes of judges by agents of the Directorate of State Services, DSS, over alleged corrupt practices, Aisha was also priming to release her bombshell.

It was the case of a stinger being stung. But, take it or leave it, despite the apparent crude or out-of-line ways both “stings” were delivered, they are bound to create changes that probably would not have taken place if “matters were strictly left to Mathias”, as we Nigerians say. I will be shocked if the Judiciary does not become more proactive over complaints of corruption among judicial officers. I will equally be shellacked if Buhari does absolutely nothing to rejig his government.

I agree with those who say Madame Buhari went slightly overboard. But to those who have been castigating her my question is: in whose interest did Aisha act? My answer is: she acted in the overall interests of her husband, the All Progressives Congress, APC, and the nation at large. She spoke the minds of many APC members and supporters, as well as for majority of Nigerians who feel that Buhari has not been true to the spirit and letters of the mandate they gave him. The President is acting out a hidden agenda. I will elaborate shortly.

Perhaps, Aisha has tried to reach her husband with her concerns and met a brick wall; the brick wall being either her husband himself or those “strangers” whom he invited to “come and eat” after others laboured to put Buhari in Aso Villa.

I find the President’s responses instructive: (1) “my wife belongs to my kitchen, my living room and the other room”; and (2) “I know politics more than my wife”.

You will recall that during the campaigns last year, Aisha did not initially feature at the soapbox. It was when some concerned party stalwarts noticed the heavy involvement of Madame Patience Jonathan in the campaigns and the impact she was making among the women that Aisha was eventually allowed to participate. I recall that her first campaign appearance was in Owerri, Imo State. Since then, she has been vocal in calling on the Party and its Federal Government to fulfill their promises.

She made this call when party officials and Presidency functionaries started denying their campaign promises and delaying the implementation of populist programmes like the Social Welfare Programme, SWP, and its School Feeding component. Aisha does not believe in the deception and lies that have characterised the APC Federal Government’s dealings with Nigerians since it came to power, and she does not want to keep silent over it.

What does Buhari mean by: “I know politics more than my wife?” For me, the answer is not only obvious, I wrote so rampantly about it as soon as he was picked as the presidential candidate of the APC in its November 2014 Lagos primaries at the Teslim “Thunder” Balogun Stadium, Surulere. I had thought Chief Ahmed Tinubu, Buhari’s main partner in the APC merger, would support his old political soul mate in the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. But, Tinubu, sensing that Buhari was vastly more popular across the North than Atiku, put his money and men behind the retired general.

It was Tinubu and the Governor of Rivers State, Chibuike Amaechi’s financial investment, logistical support and personal energies that put Buhari in Aso Villa. While that was going on, I did not see the Mamman Dauras, the David Babachir Lawals, the Babagana Mongunos, the Lawal Musa Dauras, the Hammed Alis, the Hadiza Bala Usmans and other Northerners who now occupy the most powerful and juiciest of Federal posts.

The people I saw and heard were Tinubu, Amaechi, Babatunde Fashola, Kayode Fayemi, Adams Oshiomhole and their acolytes (mostly Southerners) who branded Buhari, campaigned for him, mobilised the conventional and social media in his favour, wrote his speeches, did his strategy papers, burnished his image home and abroad and whitewashed his dictatorial past to make him look like the only living saint in Nigeria; the messiah.

But when victory came, Buhari only picked Tinubu’s estranged boys, Fayemi and Fashola, gave Amaechi and his group plum positions and (basically) locked out Tinubu and the “new” People’s Democratic Party, PDP, faction. He went and brought in the people he had always known, those who “suffered” with him when he vied and failed three times in the past and who happen to be his kinsmen and women from the Muslim North.

What Madame Aisha probably does not know is that Buhari is recreating the APC, ensuring that his old Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, faction becomes the new mainstream of the Party towards 2019 and beyond.

The posting of his kinsmen to rich ministries and departments, and his own grabbing of the Petroleum Ministry will ensure that the new APC he is configuring will no longer depend on Tinubu, Amaechi or any other “external” factor for its funding and administration in its future endeavours under his exclusive leadership.

During the campaigns last year, I had prognosticated that as soon as Buhari became President, the many Northerners hiding in the shadows and letting Tinubu and Amaechi do the dirty job of transferring power back to the North, would emerge and take over the Buhari Presidency.

It was not a “prophecy”; I merely read it from Buhari’s track record.