With the calls for legal backing being given to “office of first ladies”, I think the time has come to scrap this illegality!
On March 19 this year, I posted a fifth in my “first ladies” essays for this Blog though most have been from various essays I’ve written on the subject over the years. Below is the link to one that is eerily similar to what is now being presented as a request to the country’s “lawmakers” to give legal backing to the office.
On Thursday, June 28, The Nation carried an editorial, “Office of first ladies” in which - among other points – raised the problems posed by these “first ladies” at federal and state levels as “a drain on public fund” as well as being “duplications of state functions which can easily be carried out by the minister or commissioner for women affairs”.
An apparent sycophantic group, “First Ladies Advocacy Group (FLAG)” is already “on ground” to pursue the legalization of “an illegal office” as The Nation’s editorial describes “first ladyism”.
To read the full essay, please check out
http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/editorial/51907-office-of-first-ladies.html
As it is, the position has taken on more than a life of its own even in the South West with all her highly educated citizenry.
When Governor Akala first had the picture of his wife – or the wife had her own picture – posted across from her “excellency’s office gate, I wondered aloud in an essay why this must be done. I also cried out at the forest of his “excellency’s” humongous pictures that screamed at us all over town, “like North Korea”, I wrote. I BEGGED the governor to refrain his acolytes from posting his pictures all over town.
Now, things seem to be getting worse. The pictures of Governor Ajimobi AND those of his wife are in several places all over Ibadan town as I just found out on a return to Ibadan. It used to be where Akala’s wife had hers but not anymore.
In fact, I remember appealing to the present governor after his election and swearing-in which gave us tremendous relief and joy in Oyo State – NOT to allow his acolytes from posting all those praise-singing billboards all over town. Fat chance!
Almost immediately, a propaganda billboard that seemed to mock naïve people like me went right up, and it went like “anybody who cannot see the achievements of the first 100 days …”; may be the person is blind or needs glasses, I no longer remember.
This madness, as I once pointed out, started during the regime of retired General Obasanjo who had a poster along Lagos/Ibadan “expressway” THANKING him for seeing the road being fixed. Needless to say that the road work was soon abandoned.
Now, back to the first “ladies” most of whom are fond of frivolous and expensive personal aggrandisements like the recent essay on Benue’s Yemisi Suswam, I think Nigerians should ignore and condemn Mr. Adetunji Dolapo – or is it Dolapo ADETUNJI who, I’m sure, is representing his own interest and the interest of the self-seeking first “ladies” to whom Soyinka coined the pithy and very appropriate “first ladyism” during late Stella’s “administration.” Listen, these women actually take themselves so seriously that Ms. Suswam claims
“God put us here” and declares herself “mother of the state” just as Ms. Stella Obasanjo’s position as “mother of the nation” and “Obasanjo Boys’ imposed “father of modern Nigeria” was dismissed by this blogger before the unfortunate death of Stella this way: being the wife of the president does not make Mrs. Obasanjo ‘Mother of the Nation’ “just as we cannot describe the president as father of Nigeria, ancient or modern”.
With Mrs. Patience Jonathan already paying “official two-day visit” to Bayelsa where she infamously showed the governor who was higher up in ranking – “legal or illegal” as “first ladyism” may be, it is time Nigerians wake up and face this new onslaught by the foot soldiers of those whose goals are to make Nigeria’s 99 percent perpetual slaves.
If we go to sleep on this matter, these women would win extraordinary executive powers without having been voted for.
June 28, 2012
Nigeria: Politics/Economy, Governance, etcetera