By CHIDI OBINECHE
Aisha, wife of ailing Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari is poignantly a grandiloquent woman of the skein. Far from the maddening canvas of controversies, she is eminently adept at swift delivery of messages straight up the curves; no stutters, no evasion. Earlier, she had railed at a cabal of four or five headmen that held her husband in gruff hostage raring to torpedo his re-election prospects. The letup was uproarious.
Only a few days ago, apparently inebriated with the good arras of the “lion’s” health, she let go at the Hyenas and Jackals that have turned her husband’s kingdom into a game range, warning that the imminent return of her “ lion king” will tame and scurry them off. Ha! Neither the poetics nor the irreverence of the interloping Hyenas and Jackals can forge in the smithy of her soul the ribaldry of the fawning usurpers and the tapestry of the oddly coloured mist. Aisha paints an utterly strange kaleidoscopic postcard world, a fluid grasp at the hollow world of the jungle; a small scum of inconvenience from a crass fold of intrigues and a caustic lament and dread straight from J.P Clark’s “ A Reed in the Tide”. It is a subtle babble of a tensed and sensitive mind.
The president’s wife has turned to a songstress; miming Chidi Amuta’s classic poem “He will return”. ( “.. And I know he will return My wounded Lion will return To heal my wounds And run the errands of his blood … And I know he will return My silenced warrior will return And ascend the tree That the river of his blood nurtured” It is in one breadth a prayer, an admonition, a soothing moon dance to those who fought for the ruler.
Her missile drips with little regard to the belief that the reign of the lion ends with age and that fresh and dry leaves can burn together. She sings merely of the incubus of power and a hint of a man-god, man- spirit in a coming rage to straddle his kingdom. Taut with arrogance, she warns that the king of the jungle will soon write the epitaph of all travelers of his wild trunk. The no- music resounds in a grave echo of no- world and free from nature’s rules. Welcome to another rhythmic stage of “push- me- I – push- you God- no- go – vex”. Welcome to the dreadful roarer that stomps into the forest on a mere touching of his testes. By this, a forewarning is floated that any aerial root that attempts to block the lion king’s way will be swept into the river with him, not anymore the blab that the “dog and the baboon will be soaked in blood”. The lion in his assorted elegance shall return but may he not smart at the crack of a coke- can.
She was born on February 17, 1971 in Adamawa State in the North-east geo-political zone. Her grandfather, Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu was Nigeria’s first minister of defence. Her father was a civil engineer while her mother is a descendant of the Ankali family, renowned farmers and textile giants. She went to primary and secondary schools in Adamawa. On December 2, 1989, she married Buhari and they have five children together and one grandchild. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from Ahmadu Bello University, ABU and a Masters degree in International Affairs and Strategic Studies from the Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA, Kaduna. She is the founder/ Managing Director of Hanzy Spa and Principal of Hanzy Beauty Institute, a beauty salon in Kaduna and Abuja. She is the author of “Essentials of Beauty Therapy: A Complete Guide for Beauty Specialists.