The Centre for African Resources, Research and Development (CARRD) has commended Aisha, wife of President Muhammadu Buhari over the recent interview she granted the BBC.
In a statement signed by its Chairman, Dr Ismail Ibraheem, CARRD said it nonetheless disagreed with “the attendant global political and gender-tilted reverberations-between President Muhammadu Buhari and his wife, Mrs Aisha Buhari”.
The group also condemned Buhari’s response to his wife’s complaint, describing it as an embarrassment.
“Right in the face of global and Nigerian media, President Buhari said his wife belongs to the ‘kitchen, the living room, and the ‘other’ room’.
“This was a retort to an interview Mrs Buhari granted the BBC Hausa Service, in which she chided her husband for allowing ‘strange’ people into his cabinet and inner circle; people she accused of hijacking and destabilizing his administration, and incurring the wrath of millions of his loyalist-voters on his behalf.
“She also threatened not to campaign for him like she did in 2015, should he decide to seek re-election in 2019.
“While we agree that the President has the inalienable right to respond to whatever comments his wife makes, within and without the ‘kitchen and other rooms’, we disagree with him over his choice of words, and the global and political environment where he said them.
“President Buhari made those comments – which millions within and without Nigeria have interpreted to be misogynist, sexist and ‘Trump-like’ – beside arguably the most powerful woman in the world, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to diplomatically-veiled consternation from her.
“CARRD is tempted to ask what the President and his team are doing seeking economic, security and political assistance from a country whose leader is also supposed to ‘belong to the kitchen et al”, the group said.
CARRD reminded President Buhari “that his now ‘kitchen-belonging wife’ was of inestimable political help to him and his party during the 2015 elections, mobilizing millions of women’s votes for them, and defending her husband from misogynist and sexist accusations from the now-opposition.
“Indeed, Aisha Buhari’s cries of strange bed fellows in President Buhari’s inner circle and cabinet may not be far from the truth, with claims already in the public domain of the right officials and appointees being side-lined”.
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