The photograph of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives
Congress, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari at the Lagos State interdenominational
thanksgiving service standing with his running mate, Prof. Yemi
Osinbajo; the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God,
Pastor Enoch Adeboye, and Governor Babatunde Fashola on the front row
says something about the APC flag-bearer.
There have been murmurs about his donning a cap in church – that he is a Muslim disrespecting Christian tradition. For me, his forgetting to take off his cap shows he has yet to fully master the nuances and rituals of spaces he is treading for the sake of his political ambition. If I were a Christian, I would pardon him.
What is not so easily dismissable in the photo-op, however, is much more telling than his cap. In the picture, all the aforementioned men had their wives by their sides except Buhari...
For a man who preaches “change” and desires to rule a country made up of men and women in almost equal halves, I wonder why he finds the anomaly of an “invisible wife” wholesome. Interestingly, this is not the first time that Mrs Aisha Buhari would be left behind in her husband’s aspiration.
In 2003, she was not prominent when he lost to Olusegun Obasanjo’s “moonslide.” Four years later, not much had changed though one could argue that his biggest opponent, Umaru Yar’Adua, did not “use” his wife to campaign either. In 2011, when the presidential election was on, I asked one of Buhari’s closest aides where Mrs Buhari was and why she was practically unseen in her husband’s campaign efforts.




