By Bayo Bernard
Nigeria’s First Lady, Aisha Buhari, has reportedly been out of the country since September 2020. She has not been around her home in Aso Villa, Abuja, and is reported to be living in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, UAE.
The situation has fuelled rumours that she is uncomfortable over a number things in the Villa and Nigeria.
Her action has shocked many Nigerians who insist that she may have opted to stay in Dubai to avoid speaking on a number of things so as not to be seen as criticising her husband’s Government, a passion she is noted for.
Neither the Presidency nor the First Lady has given reasons for her long absence from the Villa and Nigeria. But before her trip out of the country, four months ago, the wife of the President had a serious spat with Sabiu Tunde Yusuf, an aide to President Buhari in June, which led to suggestions, in many quarters, that she was frustrated by power brokers in the presidency.
Aisha was said to have been so angry by that incident, in which gun shots were fired, that she made up her mind to leave Aso Villa.Those close to the villa alleged that she had considered moving out of the villa immediately, after feeling unprotected against the President’s powerful aide, more so when the confrontation happened right within the villa, but had to wait to conclude the wedding ceremony of her daughter, Hanan, in September.
For more than two decades, the ambience of Aso Villa, Nigeria’s presidential seat of power served as home to many presidents and their wives, the First Ladies.
Therefore, it was not difficult for President Buhari and his wife, Aisha, to settle in the luxurious villa after he took power from President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015.
The posh presidential villa officially became the abode of Nigeria’s first families after former Head of State, General Ibrahim Babangida, moved the presidential seat from Dodan Barracks in Lagos, to Abuja in 1991, at the tail end of his eight year dictatorship. Since then, the Villa has been home to many First Ladies such as Mayam Babangida, Mayam Abacha, Justice Fati Lami Abubakar, Stella Obasanjo, Turai Yar, Adua and Patience Jonathan.
Apart from the President and the Vice President whose offices are located in the villa, the First Lady’s office is also located within the heart of the presidential mansion, making it a Mecca of sorts for politicians and hangers on who seek to curry favour from the Government through the powerful First Lady’s office.
This was the situation that Aisha Buhari inherited when she moved in with the President alongside her five children in 2015.
But things began to change after President Buhari embarked on his first medical trip to London in June 6, 2016.
The president spent months in London which many believed derailed his administration, but his immediate family suffered was the most hit, as peace was shattered as a result of some powerful Presidential aides and close family relations, such as Mamman Daura, late Abba Kyari, President Buhari’s Chief of Staff, and others who capitalized on the President’s absence to control the presidency. Buhari has travelled to London 10 times on medical trips since he came to office.
The situation became worse after Aisha accused some presidency officials of hijacking power from her husband due to his ill-health. She blamed the said officials for the economic hardship in the country, and they,in turn, used their closeness with the ailing leader to further undermine her position, Aso Villa sources told the magazine.
To express her frustration, Aisha in, 2016, said she would not support her husband for re-election in 2019 except things changed for the better.
The President “is yet to tell me,” that he will contest in 2019 “but I have decided as his wife, that if things continue like this up to 2019, I will not go out and campaign again and ask any woman to vote like I did before. I will never do it again.” Aisha, however, campaigned, even heading a group, and her husband went on to win the Presidential election in 2019 despite controversy over his performance.
The statement was said to have riled top aides of the President and some close family members who believed she was portraying the administration in bad light. “ Therefore, the angry Aso Rock cabal had drawn a battle line with the first Lady and was only waiting for President Buhari to secure a second term in office to bare their fangs on her,” one of her close aides told the magazine at the week end.
“The President did not help matters, as his body language indicates that he’s in tune with suggestion by some cabinet officials that Aisha’s action is causing untold damage to his administration aside from opening the flanks for the opposition elements to attack the ruling APC government,” the source further said.
The crisis in Aso Villa, however, got to a head last June, when Sabiu Tunde Yusuf said to be very influential with the President, refused to isolate after a trip to London as the country battled with the corona virus pandemic. Fracas ensued after some security agents, allegedly, the order of the First Lady tried to arrest him, and gun shots were fired in the villa.
Those close to the First Lady say she was shocked that the said aide was not punished for his action by the President, which further made her to believe that she’s not given the respect normally accorded her office. She even got angrier after the President failed to sack Yusuf despite her entreaties, according to other sources.
“Nothing like this had ever happened in the villa which points to one thing: the President has lost control to a powerful cabal in the presidency, who has become so influential that they now disrespect the First Lady. Could you imagine any aide doing this to Mayam Babangida or lately, Patience Jonathan?”
Before that incident, the wife of the President also had a confrontation with Fatima, a daughter of Mamman Daura, the President’s nephew who os believed to be the most influential person in Buhari’s government.
Aisha had always accused the former Managing Director of New Nigerian Newspaper of forming a shadowy but powerful kitchen cabinet in the presidency alongside some Ministers. But the matter got bad in October 2019 after Daura’s daughter allegedly prevented the First Lady from gaining entrance into an apartment in the Villa, which had been allocated to her son, Yusuf by the president. The building, House Seven, was initially allocated to the Dauras before they were told to vacate for another building that the President’s son could stay there and recover from the motorbike accident that he had.
“They did that because my husband sacked them from the house. He told them to get all their belongings and leave the house for my son (Yusuf) to occupy. I left them and wanted to get to one of the rooms but they prevented me from getting through, I left them and took another way yet I met the store locked,” Aisha cried out after Fatima allegedly attacked her.
Garba Shehu, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity has also been mentioned in the crisis that has rocked Buhari’s presidency for over four years.
In December 2019, Aisha issued a statement where she accused Shehu of meddling in her family’s affair. In the statement entitled ‘Garba Shehu Has Gone Beyond His Boundaries’ the First Lady accused Shehu of abandoning his job and conniving with the cabal in the presidency to malign her.
Aisha had told Shehu to steer clear of her family business because “As spokesperson of the President, he 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 compact that the President signed with Nigerians on May 29, 2015 and 2019.
“To make matters worse, Mr. Shehu has presented himself to these people as a willing tool and executioner of their antics, from the corridors of power even to the level of interfering with the family affairs of the president. This should not be so. The blatant meddling in the affairs of a First Lady of a country is a continuation of the prodigal actions of those that he serves.”
She said in saner climes, Shehu would have been forced to resign after waging “a war on the First Family through an orchestrated media campaign of calumny by sponsoring pseudo accounts to write and defame my children and myself.”
“The many problems in Buhari’s presidency have become unbearable for the First Lady. It is bad, to say the least, because she has no control over what’s happening. She would have loved to make input like any wife who loves her husband would want to, but apparently she has been shut out totally by those who now control the presidency,” another presidency source said.
According to the source, Aisha “has done everything on her part to draw the President’s attention to what is happening. it’s like all her attempts hit a brick wall.”
The First Lady has not returned to the country since after the marriage ceremony between her daughter, Hanan, to the step son of the National Drug Law and Enforcement Agency, NDLEA Chairman and former Lagos military administrator, Buba Marwa, last September. And Nigerians are asking why.
