On ‘kitchen, living room and the other room’ we stand!

By now, with the unprecedented oozing out of the rather mundane husband-and-wife conflict, President Muhammadu Buhari would have convinced all cynics and doubting Thomases that he is stunningly capable of bringing about the change to all facets of  the country’s national life, which he chanted throughout 2015 electioneering. And his wife, Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, is stunningly capable of helping him to do so, however she deems fit.
Husband and wife clashes are a truism; so, it is platitudinous to say that so long as they are bound by the bond of matrimony, they would quarrel over various matters and issues according to their capacity and standing in the society as a family.
Normally, whenever they occur, such quarrels do not ooze out to any inch farther than parents, kinsmen, intimate friends and trusted neighbours and associates, let alone to the scoffing and scolding public.
Buhari and Aisha are husband and wife like every other, in spite of the presidential capacity they are bestowed with. So, any quarrel between them, in keeping with the universal human cultures and traditions, should normally not be heard by the public. Considering their bestowed capacity as a Presidential Couple, they are even expected to be role models on the strict observance of this matrimonial conduct.

The “kitchen, living room and the other room” of the presidential home should all have the acoustic treatment of a broadcast studio to prevent any sound that must never be heard by unwanted persons from filtering out. However, the President and his wife, decisively brought about an unprecedented change in the matrimonial conduct of a couple, nay, the number one couple in the country.
About a fortnight ago, Aisha unprecedentedly complained to the global community about the political conducts of her husband of 27 years in an interview she quite belligerently granted the Hausa Service of the BBC, reeling out her grouses against the characters around him; his abandonment of the people who went through thick and thin with him throughout the electioneering and committed their immense intellectual and material resources towards his success, and rather embraced a set of people who suddenly emerged from under the table as aides; that, if he does not reform, he should be prepared for inevitable revolt from the politicians and electorate he has ditched; that should he seek re-election in 2019, she will not campaign for him.

Buhari fired back in far away Germany, saying that his wife belonged to the kitchen, his living room and other room in their matrimonial home; and that he did not know the political party she belonged to. I think no one should pick any troubles with the President for telling his wife pointblank that she belongs to “the kitchen, the living room and the other room,” if his promise to get rid of the Office of the First Lady during electioneering is anything to go by.
Aisha did what the wife of a leader in her capacity has never done; and the President replied in the tone and manner a husband of his persona has never been expected to do. Their utterances sparked epochal public outrage within and outside the country.
The profoundly perplexed public have since then been raining torrential scoffing, scolding and, to some extent, even childish utterances on the President and his wife for being so unprecedentedly petit in conduct. However, a section of the perplexed public is beginning to generate another argument to the whole matter.
This section of the public sees a faint light of stage-management on the whole thing as a novel method of creating alibi for some decisive action against some people who prove to be otherwise so difficult to be dealt with through conventional methods. For, how can the President and his wife fall from their lofty heights to behave so petit without any purpose other than the one initially and spontaneously fathomed?

There are very notable facts about the whole matter. One, Aisha lives under the same roof with the President. So, she does not need a BBC platform to reach out to her husband on issues of governance, party affairs or the perception of the so called 15 million voters on the direction of his administration. This would, therefore, imply that the interview could not have been intended to slight or spite the President’s style, or to draw his attention to issues concerning the characters around him or his style of leadership.
Two, considering the security architecture of the Presidential Villa, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for that kind of interview to take place without the knowledge of the President because all the key staff around Aisha are aides of the President. Every movement by, to and around her should normally and adequately be known to him. He is informed of every visitor to even the Vice President’s wing. Moreover, the security details attached to the wife of the President and other top State House inhabitants are not just decoration tools.
Given these hard facts, it is safe to assume that the whole thing was arranged. Yes, it stinks of a hoax.


This section of the public sees a faint light of stage-management on the whole thing, as a novel method of creating alibi for some decisive action against some people who prove to be, otherwise, so difficult to be dealt with through conventional methods. For, how can the President and his wife fall from their lofty heights to behave so petit without any purpose other than the one initially and spontaneously fathomed?