Meet Nigeria’s First Ladies: One from the other room, the vainglorious, the schemer, the Co-President, and the boisterous

It is said that behind every successful man there is a woman. Often,
women are relegated to the background while men take the spotlight as
the world celebrates a success they jointly accomplished. However, not
all women are satisfied with labouring in obscurity, some chafe at the
restraint informed by traditional beliefs and ensure that they take a
place in the limelight right beside their men.
Powerful men in history have been reported showering fulsome praises
and endearments on their wives. The late Obafemi Awolowo once referred
to his wife as “a jewel of inestimable value”. Bill Clinton, the 42nd
president of the United States of America, made no bones of his faith
in his wife’s ability when he said during his presidential campaign in
1992, “Buy one, get one free”. Such is the affection and bond that
undergird conjugal relationship that oftentimes when a man assumes a
position of authority it is often his wife that indirectly rules. Men
always have their say but it is often women that have their way.
From Maryam Babangida to Aisha Buhari, in this piece, we examined the
time of some wives of Nigerian heads of state while occupying the
‘office of the first lady’ even though the office is not recognised by
the Nigerian constitution.

Maryam Babangida (1985-1993): The office of the first lady – even
though unconstitutional – had been in existence before Maryam
Babangida, wife of Gen. (retd.) Ibrahim Babangida who ruled the
country from 1985 to 1993, assumed the office.
However, it was the Asaba-born woman with her stately bearing that
first brought glamour and panache to the office. Maryam loved the
trappings of the exalted office, she was enamoured of the lure of
power and she never hid it. She first rose to prominence in 1983 when
her husband became the chief of army staff during the regime of Gen.
Muhammadu Buhari. By virtue of her husband’s position, she became the
president of the Nigerian Army Officers’ Wives Association. When her
husband eventually, through a bloodless coup, toppled the regime of
his boss and became the Head of states, Maryam could not but bask in
the reflected glory of her husband. Maryam founded Better Life (for
rural women) programme to empower rural women and liberate them from
the shackles of poverty.
Maryam would later turn the programme into a conduit pipe for
siphoning state funds without restraint. With overweening self-will
and self-confidence she took charge of the programme in a manner, that
was dictatorial and militaristic; Maryam brooked no opposition from
the wives of the state governors at the state level. Not only that,
she ensured that she was the lone feminine star in the political
firmament of the country during her husband’s reign.
So that no other woman’s shine would put hers in the shade, Maryam
Babangida prevailed on her husband not to make a woman, no matter her
qualification or competence, a minister during his regime. She even
supervised the sack of Francesca Emmanuel, the only female
Director-General in the public service. Maryam held court during the
administration of her husband and did not allow anyone to challenge
her stardom; she fought and consigned to obscurity any woman that
tried to share the limelight with her.
Throughout the eight-year reign, IBB was Maryam’s marionette. She
pulled the strings to ensure her husband did her bidding. Her display
of arrogance of power reached a dizzying and maddening height when she
dressed down Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, then-minister of foreign affairs
in his husband’s cabinet. As reported by The News Magazine of October
25, 1993, Maryam summoned him one night to reprimand him over clashing
dates for a cocktail reception she wished to organise for ECOWAS
ambassadors and their wives. She apparently informed the minister, in
the presence of her husband, that she had a joint-right with the
president to appoint a new minister of external affairs.
The minister would be sacked after the incident but there have been
many versions to the reason he was given the boot. Akinyemi would
later describe the incident as the beginning of “joint imperial
presidency”. Maryam Babangida was that influential that many believe
till today that her husband endorsed the carving of Delta state out of
the old Bendel state and made her hometown Asaba the capital to please
his wife.
In fact her book titled ‘Home Front’: Nigerian Army Officers and Their
Wives, published in 1988, emphasised the value of the work that women
perform in the home in support of their husbands, and it was savagely
criticized by feminists. Maryam Babangida died of ovarian cancer on 27
December 2009 in a Los Angeles, California hospital.

Mariam Abacha (1993-1998): Nigeria has an uncanny ability to “throw
up” events or happenstances that defy rationalisation. How do you
explain the fact that the name of Aguiyi Ironsi’s wife is Victoria and
that of Yakubu Gowon– his successor in office- is Victoria too? In
the same vein, after Babangida relinquished power to an interim
government, the wife of Abacha too is known as Maryam. When Mariam
Abacha predecessor assumed the office of the first lady glamourized by
her predecessor she took wastefulness and recklessness to another
height. Her eldest daughter, Zainab, also opened an office for herself
in the Presidency – that of the First Daughter.
Mariam Abacha herself took to political intervention at the highest
levels. For example, she played a significant role in getting state
jobs or contracts for her friends and cronies. She was sufficiently
confident of her powers to openly declare in a BBC interview that
although she did not make decisions herself, ministers and foreign
diplomats seeking appointments with her husband should come to see
her, as she had the capacity to fix their problems (Punch, November 4,
1999).
However, it was public knowledge that there was no love lost between
Maryam Babangida and Mariam Abacha throughout the tenure of Babangida.
Therefore, Mariam Abacha’s first task was to clear Nigeria’s public
space of every vestige of Maryam Babangida’s era.
In their “professional careers” as wives of army officers, the two
women had developed a bitter rivalry.
The BLP was dissolved and a “new” similar organization, the Family
Support Programme (FSP) was established in its place. The Family
Economic Advancement Programme was also set in motion to implement the
FSP and significant state funds were devoted to it. State officials
were incorporated into these structures exactly as they had been in
the days of Maryam Babangida and the BLP. The Maryam Babangida Centre
for Women and Development was taken over by the state, in spite of its
registration as a private trust.
Mariam Abacha ‘reigned’ for five years; her reign came to an abrupt
end when her husband suddenly died on June 8, 1998.

Justice Fati Abubakar (1998-1999): After the sudden death of Sani
Abacha in 1998. Abdusalami Abubakar took over the reins of power. His
wife automatically became the first lady. She, however, refused to use
the title of the first lady. Self-effacing and modest Justice Fati
Abubakar, a High court Judge brought a modicum of common sense to the
office of the first lady. She displayed some measure of frugality
where her predecessors showed flamboyance.
Fati established Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative
(WRAPA). She followed due process in the registration of the
organization and the reason it has outlived her husband’s reign as
head of states. It is often said that she was responsible for the
willingness of her husband to hand over power to a democratically
elected president.

Stella Obasanjo (1999-2005): After sixteen years of the unbroken spell
of militarism, Nigeria returned to democracy. At the inception of the
Olusegun Obasanjo administration as democratically elected president,
he declared publicly that he had no first lady but a wife. It,
however, took Stella Obasanjo just six months to do away with the
ordinariness of the wife of the president and embrace the title of the
‘First Lady’. Stella brought back the ostentation of the two Maryams.
She insisted on having the insignia of the presidency whenever she had
cause to address the nation. She would appear on television and even
address the nation standing before the national crest, a privilege
usually reserved for the President.  Her desire for the spotlight
became more intense than any first lady before her because she had two
of the Atiku’s wives (Titi and Jamila) to contend with. Titi Abubakar
launched her own organization, Women Trafficking and Child Labour
Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF). The organization began to give her
both national and international fame. Stella could not stand her
rivalry again because her childcare trust paled into nothing beside
Titi’s WOTCLEF. Stella decided to put her in her rightful place as the
wife of the Vice-President.
On 24 June 2003, Stella Obasanjo called the wives of the state
governors to Abuja –according to Africanwoman – and publicly declared
in front of television cameras that: “There is only one First Lady in
Nigeria. Period!” She went on to warn them to stop using the title
‘First Lady’ and to revert to their proper title of governor’s wife.
They were also directed to stop receiving the wife of the
Vice-President when she visited their states.
Stella Obasanjo died a few weeks before her 60th birthday from
complications of cosmetic surgery at a private health clinic in Puerto
Banús, Marbella, Spain, on 23 October 2005 while undergoing elective
liposuction.

Turai Yar’Adua (2007-2010): The seemingly demure wife of Umar Yar’Adua
could be mistaken for a pushover because of his demeanour. Her true
nature was known in the turbulent days that preceded her husband’s
death. Turai was said to have played all political cards to ensure,
against constitutional stipulations, her emergence as the successor of
her husband. She was said to be plotting, together with some power
brokers in the North loyal to her husband, to complete her husband’s
tenure. She established a centre for the treatment of cancer. Her
reign as the first lady came to an end on May 5, 2010, when her
husband died.

Patience Jonathan (2010-2015): If other first ladies were accused of
ostentation during their years in office, Patience Jonathan, aka Mama
Peace, did not show the finesse that suits the office of the first
lady. She behaved like a bumptious bumpkin and smeared the office with
vulgarity. Patience was a perfect foil for her husband who always cut
the image of a meek and mousy man while his tenure lasted. Dame was
never tame; she was rather vocal, daring and brassy. She was in
control and always gave the impression that her husband was putty in
her hand. Many people believed she called the shots during her
husband’s five-year reign.
Apart from her Women for Change Initiative, many Nigerians will
remember her for wilful ‘murder’ of the English grammar. Her
intervention in Rivers State politics infuriated Wole Soyinka that he
had asked his husband to call her to her senses. The Noble Prize
winner said Dame “should first be a lady before being a first lady'”.
Nigerians will also remember her theatrics and histrionics on TV when
in reaction to the abduction of Chibok girls she kept saying, “chai,
chai, there is God o!” She was energetic and bold despite all her
flaws.

Aisha Buhari (2015- ): While her husband, President Muhammadu Buhari,
said he belonged to everyone and to nobody, he was also sure where his
wife belongs. Unequivocally, he chose faraway Germany –if you may,
‘West Germany’ –to desecrate not just his woman but Nigerian women
when he brashly said Aisha Buhari belonged to the kitchen and –wait
for it –in “the other room”.
By all standards, Aisha is a beauty that shouldn’t be reserved for
such confines. She is also brainy. On many occasions, she has proved
her husband’s kitchen-and-the-other-room statement to be wrong.
No dead or living Nigerian head of state has had an adversarial first
lady like Aisha Buhari: she is forceful and deliberate in thoughts and
words. She has castigated her husband often publicly. She has
lambasted Buhari’s government and his inner circle of advisers. She
has never minced words about her utter dislike for the men –the Aso
Rock cabal –that President Buhari surrounds himself with. This
Nigerian first lady has come with a vengeance. She takes on everybody
in the All Progressives Congress at will. She is never apologetic.
Recently, she sloughed off the wife of the president title and asked
the citizens of the country to be addressing her as “First lady”.
With her new title and the seeming antagonism, she exhibits against
her husband and members of his cabinet, it is yet to be known what
manner of woman she will become.
As her husband begins his second tenure in office and people are
beginning to ‘distrust’ her husband’s supposed integrity, perhaps
people might begin to see her true colours. It is not known if she
would end up like her namesake, Aisha Hamani Diouri, wife of the
former Niger President Hamani Diouri, who became tyrannical during the
reign of her husband. She has promised to set up a university in
honour of her husband.
There was a time she became an author, launched a book and made a
fortune from that. Yet, there is more to First Lady Aisha Buhari than
meets the eye.
Source: Saharareporters