NigeriansTalk

There is much to cope with when you are the wife of a sick and/or dying pres­i­dent. There is even more to cope with if said hus­band has now been evicted from a bet­ter work­ing hos­pi­tal in Saudi Ara­bia and is now back in the gov­ern­ment house, caus­ing com­mo­tion and/or being some sort of nui­sance to the rule of law that has vested polit­i­cal author­ity albeit in act­ing capac­ity in the Vice-President for the time being. As a woman in the unen­vi­able posi­tion of bal­anc­ing loy­alty to a dying man, tak­ing care of said man and his polit­i­cal cap­i­tal, and keep­ing sane within a bar­rage of flak from the cit­i­zenry, there must be much to cope with. If we could step back a lit­tle from per­sonal dis­agree­ment with her per­son­al­ity (which we don’t know much about, except hearsay) and what the gov­ern­ment rep­re­sents, could we per­haps find in Turai Yar’adua a woman of sub­stance who’s just being a loyal wife to a dying hus­band? I wondered.

Prompted by a friend’s tweet yes­ter­day, express­ing admi­ra­tion for the wife of Nigeria’s sickly pres­i­dent, I sec­onded the idea that she must pos­sess some deft polit­i­cal sleight of hand, or at least a very strong sur­vival instinct that must deserve either sym­pa­thy or admi­ra­tion. Noth­ing doing, I hit on an idea of some­thing cre­ative, a project to gen­er­ate dis­cus­sion, or at least put the woman into proper per­spec­tive, mostly in my own thoughts and in the thoughts of the country’s cit­i­zens. A few min­utes later, I “dis­cov­ered” her twit­ter account. There were two of them actu­ally. The first and truly authen­tic twit­ter account of the first lady is @turaiyaradua. But I also found @yaraduaturai, and I imme­di­ately doubted that it had any­thing to do with her. Location: Nigeria. Bio: Wife, Mother, First lady, still.

If there was ever a name gen­er­at­ing so much mixed, but mostly pejo­ra­tive reac­tion from much of the Niger­ian pop­u­lace, I real­ized within the first one hour of dis­cov­er­ing the twit­ter iden­tity that it could only have been @YaraduaTurai, and maybe for a good rea­son. Her hus­band who at this moment does not have much con­sti­tu­tional recog­ni­tion beyond being just a cit­i­zen has been moved into the State House and is being a source of pal­pa­ble ten­sion and stress for the legally rec­og­nized Act­ing Pres­i­dent (the for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent) Jonathan. Who con­trols the mil­i­tary and other state secu­rity ser­vice at the moment? It should be the Act­ing Pres­i­dent since he’s the one rec­og­nized by the law­mak­ing houses in the coun­try. But there is much doubt as to whether he able to exer­cise such a power while the “first” fam­ily lives with him in the villa, even pre­vent­ing him from sit­ting in the president’s cer­e­mo­nial chair.

I was shocked, like many oth­ers from Nige­ria around the world when the news­pa­per reported thcrat state secu­rity ser­vices went to raid his office yes­ter­day, pur­purted on the orders of the first lady. Could this be true? How could it be? She doesn’t even have con­sti­tu­tional power to act. The man that was elected is too sick to make such a deci­sion. Or too sane to make such a deci­sion even if he wasn’t sick. The Veepee still deserves a level of respect that makes him immune from such harass­ment. Or do I live in a dif­fer­ent bub­ble of com­mon sense? A friend agrees that the news­pa­pers are just being too mil­i­tant, or at best blow­ing things out of pro­por­tion. Unfor­tu­nately, they have got every­one think­ing alike, and Mrs Yar’adua has been cast in the shadow of a power-hungry villain.

Any­way, @YaraduaTurai’s first tweet read “We are back. Thank you for your sup­port and prayers” — an almost neu­tral yet pos­i­tive mes­sage if there was one, yet it quickly became con­tro­ver­sial. Within min­utes, there were count­less retweets, some with more venom than oth­ers, but each mes­sage mixed with mis­chief and a dis­re­spect­ful dis­in­ter­est. The rest were mostly skep­ti­cal of the iden­tity of the per­son behind the twit­ter account, yet every­one seemed cau­tious in one way or the other. It was clear that she wasn’t exactly a pop­u­lar per­son within cit­i­zens, and peo­ple would give any­thing to have them out of the State House to any­where else in the coun­try. And for a good rea­son. By evening, the twit­ter account had got fol­low­ing, and cit­i­zens couldn’t wait to throw darts at whom they felt rep­re­sented the repres­sion and ret­ro­gres­sion of the old government.

But in-between the increas­ing word-of-mouth increase in pop­u­lar­ity of the twit­ter account within 5hours, Twit­ter must have lost their sense of humour maybe because of the user’s aggres­sive fol­low­ing, and the account was promptly sus­pended. By then, “she” had fol­lowed over five hun­dred peo­ple, myself included, and she was being fol­lowed by a grow­ing num­ber of curi­ous yet cau­tious Nige­ri­ans, but her short reign on the elec­tronic plat­form had come to an abrupt end, sadly, unlike her sup­posed hold on the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment at the moment.

I came off from this expe­ri­ence being a lit­tle sad at our impa­tience and will­ing­ness to quickly judge per­son­al­ties from a dis­tance. There was also the inevitable real­iza­tion of the media’s power to cre­ate and destroy. Unlike this blogger’s thoughts, I do hope that it doesn’t take 92days until her twit­ter fan page is brought back from the life-support machine. From the short lifes­pan of the project, I also real­ized the power of free speech even in the face of sym­bols of power. Twit­ter may be a least per­sonal means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but it has empow­ered cit­i­zens to con­front the per­ceived sym­bols of their oppression.

I am still say­ing a prayer for Nige­ria. May all be well in the end.