Buhari's Wife Will Vote For Jonathan --Obasi

As a father of five daughters, whenever I think of Muhammadu Buhari,
what comes to my mind is a regime that was completely insensitive to
the feminine gender.

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.
--Vanguard