January 27, 2010
For discerning persons who know how the Yar’Adua administration has worked since inception, the controversy that Vice President Goodluck Jonathan called Turai Yar’Adua, the first lady, to get directives on performing the duties of the president is really no news. With the structure at the seat of power in Abuja, it would not have been surprising to Aso Rock insiders that Jonathan called Turai to intimate her of political developments. A few weeks ago, the Federal High Court, Abuja ruled that the vice president could perform the duties of the president in the latter’s absence. Controversy broke out in the media when it was reported that rather than follow the ruling, the vice president was awaiting the reaction of President Umaru Yar’Adua or his wife. Specifically, Jonathan was said to have telephoned the first lady to intimate her of the ruling by Justice Dan Abutu and ask for directives on what to do. However, the vice president in a statement signed by Ima Niboro, special assistant on media, denied calling the first lady to take directives. Stating that Jonathan last spoke to Turai on January 5, after he had spoken to Yar’Adua, the statement declared that the vice president was not indecisive but was in charge and able to discharge the responsibilities of the office of president without seeking instructions from anyone.
But Turai, in the power structure in the presidency has before now been one who has always called the shots. Her authority and hold on the levers of power have not even diminished by her absence due to her husband’s illness. Turai has always been the power behind Yar’Adua — in the home, when he was governor and now, that he is president. An incident of many years ago perhaps best dramatizes the power that Turai has always wielded in the president’s life and work. The words, words of wisdom as it turned out, were sown over two decades ago. But they have germinated in the pregnant belly of time and have finally been born in the political events that currently haunt Nigeria. In 1991, Umaru Yar’Adua, then somewhat a political neophyte, aspired to contest in the governorship race in Katsina State. Ordinarily, the election would have been a walk over. After all, his elder brother, Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, a retired major general, was one of the most influential men in the Social Democratic Party, SDP, and the strongest political force in the state. But the older Yar’Adua would not support his brother. In fact, he was reported to have given tacit support to his brother’s opponent, Saidu Barda, candidate of the National Republican Convention, NRC. When SDP stalwarts went to the retired general to appeal to him to change his mind he reportedly asked them whom they wanted to put in Government House, Katsina; Umaru or Turai, his wife?
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For some of those present that day, the retired general’s words are proving uncannily prescient. And any one of them still alive today would wonder at how prophetic those words have become not only for Yar’Adua and his wife, but also for Nigeria. For, those prophetic words, few as they were, provide a simultaneous psychoanalysis of both Yar’Adua and his wife. For Yar’Adua, the brother, who was actually like a father, was providing an invaluable insight into the persona of the man who, finally in 1999, would become governor of Katsina State, and in whose hands fate would in 2007 thrust the responsibility of ruling Nigeria, the most populous black country in the world. It speaks volumes that the older Yar’Adua did not have confidence that his brother could with much independence rule his state in 1991 and that a vote for him would be a vote for his wife. It was a vote of no confidence on Yar’Adua by someone who knew him intimately, perhaps, more than anybody alive at that time. Some would interpret this lack of confidence to mean that Yar’Adua is probably someone without a mind of his own or someone who would allow his wife to rule him. Many of Yar’Adua’s critics say these traits, this seeming inability to take firm decisions on his own, have been the hallmark of his time as governor of Katsina State and President of Nigeria. In the case of Turai, the senior Yar’Adua’s misgivings readily paint a picture of an ambitious and overbearing wife, a woman who naturally loves to dominate her environment. How true this portraiture has turned out to be for Turai in her time at the Government House, Katsina and now at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa where she holds court as first lady? Those who know Turai well describe her as a naturally assertive, sententious and overbearing person who likes to dominate and control any environment where she operates — her home, family, and now, as first lady, the seat of power. But perhaps it is circumstances and the environment that have shaped the character that the first lady has turned out to be. After all, she has come virtually from grass to grace from being the wife of a struggling lecturer to first being a governor’s wife and then Nigeria’s first lady. Perhaps, this transportation from the valley of life to the dizzying heights of political power in a country like Nigeria, where power can absolutely intoxicate and corrupt, has been too much for the humble mind of this graduate of education and has thus, turned her into the lioness that she is today!
No. Turai is naturally a domineering person who not just loves power but is wielding it and letting all around know where it lies. An intelligent and calculating woman, she has only exploited the circumstances of her life to strengthen her natural instincts. Before she ever tasted political power, she exhibited her natural penchant to rule her environment, a situation that has estranged her from the larger Yar’Adua family. First she is believed to have sent her husband’s other wife packing. And the other members of the family who encouraged her husband to marry another have become lifelong enemies. Today, as first lady, she is believed to be partly responsible for the alleged estrangement of the president from the larger Yar’Adua family. Interestingly, in an ironic twist that amplifies Turai’s selfish streak and bizarre love of power, the same woman who would not allow her husband, a Muslim, the pleasure of having a second wife, has conveniently undertaken the task of giving out her young daughters away as second and third wives to rich, powerful but much older men. In fact the last daughter to be given out in marriage was already betrothed to someone else, a big businessman in the oil industry before the first lady married her off to another state governor. For Turai, matrimonial bliss lies in wealth and power. Apparently it is more important that her daughters be married to powerful governors who would be able to sustain the first family’s aristocratic heritage. In the first lady’s thinking, she must imagine that in case her husband cannot continue as president, she can still somehow, however remotely, remain politically relevant, and even possibly continue to hold some lever of power through her daughter’s marriage to men in political authority.
It is the same kind of domineering role that she has brought to Aso Rock, the seat of power. At the Presidential Villa, Turai has brought a new meaning and definition to the office of first lady, an office not recognized by the constitution. At a mundane level, she has her own office with a full complement of staff, including secretarial, protocol and security personnel. She has her own convoy of cars. But at a more telling level, Turai wields enormous, almost unassailably limitless, power in the presidency. It is not an exaggeration to say that Turai is the most feared person in Aso Rock, much more than the president himself. A strategic thinker, the first lady has positioned herself in such a way that she virtually rules Nigeria. Some say that there are certain things about the running of the country the full details of which the president does not have but which are in the first lady’s palms. What the ambitious, and some say, rather assertive, first lady has done is to exploit both Yar'Adua’s weaknesses and sickness to catapult herself into the position of a shadow president of Nigeria. First, she understands the weakness of her husband’s natural deliberateness in taking decisions and his apparent slowness to act and the danger it poses in the power equation in Aso Rock. In the early days, other people in the Yar’Adua administration noticed this power lacuna and tried to exploit it by creating power blocs for themselves. Thus was born a clique comprising the likes of Abba Ruma, minister for agriculture and water resources; Tanimu Yakubu, the national economic adviser; Yayale Ahmed, secretary to the government of the federation, SGF, and initially, in the early days, Babagana Kingibe, former SGF. However, Turai soon showed everybody who held the lever of power. And she was in a very strategic position to do so. For the often ill Yar’Adua, the role the first lady plays as the president’s permanent nurse thrusts upon her a rare opportunity to occupy the center stage in the power equation at the villa.
She administers the president’s drugs, determines when he has put in enough work hours for the day, and so should take a rest, the time when the president should retire to bed. After all he is her husband. Then at daybreak, it has always been the decision of madam, when the president would be available for a new day’s duties. Soon Turai was, in this position, able to determine when Yar’Adua saw people and the people who got to see him. She went further to determining which official files the president treated. Former ministers in Yar’Adua’s cabinet have shared with the magazine their frustration about the way Turai interfered in their official duties.
Ministers who wanted to see the president were “fenced” by the first lady who then took over official files and, they suspect, influenced what her husband did with them. The magazine learnt that more than anything else, what hastened the exit of Lieutenant General Abdulahi Mohammed, former chief of staff under President Olusegun Obasanjo who was retained by Yar’Adua, was the interference by Turai in official matters. Mohammed who played a strategic stabilising role in the Obasanjo government had free access to the president and his advice was well respected. But with Yar’Adua, the situation changed as Turai was carrying out some of his duties. Or in other cases, Mohammed allegedly had to hold meetings or discuss with Turai, official matters, before seeing the president. Within a few months, Mohammed was fed up and wanted out but was prevailed upon by a prominent Nigerian to stay a while to help stabilize the new administration. The experience of Kingibe was not too different. Kingibe, as secretary to the government, ran the engine room of the government as his office saw to the implementation of government policies. But Turai soon started to look through files from the SGF meant for the president. Initially, Kingibe left files for Turai to pass on to the president but when he observed that the first lady was being deliberately manipulative, he demurred and stopped leaving files in her care. That some insist was probably the last straw for him in the power game in the administration and he was soon on his way out. Turai equally enjoys peddling the influence of her office to the fullest.
Before the president’s latest sickness and evacuation for treatment in Saudi Arabia, when it came to the issue of juicy federal appointments, Turai was the person to see. She is known to have influenced the appointment of at least three ministers. One of them, from the South-west, had approached the first lady expressing interest in a particular ministry where somebody else’s name had been penciled down. Turai assured him of her support and only told him to ensure that he carried his party at the state level along. Once his name came from the state, the first lady ensured that he got the ministry he wanted. Turai is also said to be instrumental in the appointment of a minister who holds a strategic ministry. The minister from the North is said to have given one of the daughters of the first family a huge monetary gift, when the daughter was getting married. Impressed by the largesse, and perhaps to show appreciation, when shortly after, the president wanted to make changes in his cabinet, Turai asked the man if he would like to be a minister and which ministry he would like to man. The man told her he was interested and went ahead to name his choice ministry. He was appointed. Because of the power Turai wielded, many people also thought she could swing virtually anything, even tasks that were clearly beyond the president. For example, when a former governor had his election challenged in court, rather than trust the courts, he, in desperation, allegedly sought the help of the first lady.
A reliable source told the magazine that Turai assured him that she would help intervene in the matter. The source said that in order to oil the wheel of the matter for the favorable ruling, the ex-governor coughed out a huge sum of money. However, the former governor lost his seat. When he went to see Turai to find out what happened, she was said to have casually explained that things did not work out the way she planned it. And she casually told the stupefied former governor that she would ask the president to find him a position in the government. But there are other ways by which Turai peddles her influence. First, she is said to dictate who some juicy contracts go to. In turn she is well appreciated by the successful winner. On the other hand, there are those who suspect that contracts influenced by the first lady may have been won by fronts. Perhaps, that suspicion is enhanced by the fact that she is said to be very brazen in getting any contract she wants. No matter what the process required is to get such contracts, the first lady just calls up the minister in charge of the ministry, department or agency, MDA, and expresses her interest. And her love for huge contracts is said to be insatiable. She is believed to have sponsored people for contracts in the ministry of agriculture, particularly rice, silos construction and fertilizer purchase contracts. A minister, miffed by Turai’s overbearing demands for contracts once complained to a source to the magazine that “the first lady is too greedy and wants to dictate all the big contracts in my ministry”. There are other ministers and senior government officials who are tired of the first lady’s manipulative ways. Others are equally concerned. A top Nigerian, a statesman once had cause to cautiously express concern to President Yar’Adua that he learned that the first lady was virtually running the presidency. Yar'Adua’s defense was that the only reason why people say Turai is the one running the Villa is because he was not quarreling with his wife openly. So enormous and gripping is Turai’s hold on the levers of power and authority that even with her absence from Aso Rock due to the president’s sickness and admission to a Saudi hospital, she continues to call some shots. In fact, the near crisis that Nigeria has been thrown in the last two months of the president’s absence from office has been virtually orchestrated by Turai in far-away Saudi Arabia.
And rather than easing her influence and stranglehold on governance, being held up in Saudi Arabia, at her husband’s bedside has actually amplified her influence and strengthened her hold firmly on things back home. First, the foundation for the near chaos was laid when Yar’Adua was unceremoniously flown to Saudi Arabia on November 23, 2009, without duly handing over to Vice President Goodluck Jonathan. Constitutionally, to prevent a power vacuum, whenever the president knows that he would be away from his duties for a period, he should hand over to the vice president who would act as president. Also, the president failed to transmit to the National Assembly the fact of his trip for medical attention and absence from duty as required by the constitution. Taking off without doing these many things that needed presidential attention such as signing of the supplementary budget and swearing in of Justice Aloysius Kastina-Alu as the chief justice of Nigeria, CJN, raised controversies.
Beyond the issue of properly handing over, the information about the true state of the president’s health condition has been terribly manipulated that for a long time even the vice president and cabinet ministers could not say exactly what the truth was about Yar’Adua’s health. In fact, in Abuja, the capital city, the situation was so bad that ministers were asking journalists for details of the president’s health. In the early days of Yar’Adua’s trip to Saudi Arabia, and with the unclear picture of things and the way the information was being guarded like a state secret, many ministers refused to take calls from cabinet colleagues for fear that discussions may dovetail into inquiries about the ill-health of the president. Turai’s skills have actually found greater expression at this time. First, she limited the number of people who knew anything about the president’s true health situation to just a handful of people she could trust or manipulate. In fact, apart from the president’s aide-de-camp and chief security detail who by security protocol always stays with him, the only persons that Turai communicated with in official circles for a few days about the president’s health were Ruma and Yakubu.
While speculations and rumours walked on all fours in the nation’s streets with people becoming agitated about their president’s health, the first lady kept mum. Not even the vice president, the Senate president or the Speaker of the House of Representatives were informed of the true situation of things. Worse still when some state governors, including Bukola Saraki and Isa Yuguda of Kwara and Bauchi states respectively, went to Saudi Arabia to see things for themselves, they were denied access to him. Bukola has gone to Saudi Arabia twice now without being allowed to see Yar’Adua.
That is in spite of the fact that he is very close to the president and is also a medical doctor. But why is Turai doing all these? Why is she so scared of her sick husband letting go of power? Or as Ene Ede, coordinator of the Feminist Movement of Nigeria puts it in an interview with NEXT newspapers why would Turai not ask or allow her husband to resign, or “say to her husband, you have made history and another person can start from here?” Apparently, for Turai, enjoyment of power and all the benefits it brings appear to many to be more important than her husband’s health or, indeed, that of the whole nation.
A politician said cynically that Turai would rather her husband die in office than willingly allow him to resign from office. In fact, some others say that she actually expressed such sentiments when a delegation of women from the North visited her sometime ago and suggested that the president resign to deal with his health. Turai reportedly retorted that he would not be the first leader to die in office, citing or apparently referring to Generals Murtala Mohammed and Sani Abacha, both former military heads of state. But there is also a deeper psychosomatic dimension to Turai’s latter-day persona, which might be rooted in the dynamics of social relations in the extended Yar’Adua family. Some who know Turai well say that she will do anything for herself, husband and children. She is said to love her husband to a fault and her seeming high-handedness derives from a deep-rooted desire to protect her husband, particularly since his sickness began many years ago. Turai might be in denial and wants every other person to join her in believing that her husband is okay. Anyone that says otherwise immediately becomes an enemy. It is the same kind of attitude that has reportedly informed her treatment of the Yar’Adua family. Turai is said to have a deep-rooted grouse with the larger family because of the perceived rejection of her husband in the past. The retired general and many other members of the family had been miffed by the fact that in the past, Yar’Adua allegedly ran aground three of the family businesses given to him to manage — a farm, carpet factory and the company that published The Reporter newspapers. Many in the family therefore did not take Yar’Adua serious after that.
Perhaps, reacting to that, after they came into power, no member of the larger family enjoys the pleasures of getting close to the first family. In fact to rub it in, the first lady’s attitude is that God has rewarded her husband, the rejected stone of the family, with the same position he denied the older Yar’Adua. No matter how Turai acts as she does, the reality today is that her husband’s continued stay in office has caused some confusion not only in the country but deep division among the political class, even in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
Interestingly, this first lady who has succeeded in virtually holding the nation to ransom has absolutely no role to play under the constitution. But in a democracy, ruled by a constitution, Turai has succeeded in creating such a powerful role for the first lady that not even her predecessors under the military ever envisaged. The effect has been for the nation a not too pleasant experience.
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