How To Solve Tinubu’s ‘Women Problem’

There are few who meet Senator Remi Tinubu without going away with a favourable impression of the lady that has become Nigeria’s First Lady and the leading light for Nigerian women.

With a beauty that resonates in pictures and reality, Senator Remi Tinubu alongside Senator Margery Okadigbo qualifies as the only women in Nigeria to have sat in the Senate after their husbands.

The legacies of her representation bear testimony in the many lives she has transformed through her Good Boys and Girls Empowerment Project, a scheme that has seen her move several areas boys and girls from the streets of Lagos into productive ventures.

Her simplicity is also seen in the usual way she genuflects before her elders, many of whom are also prized instruments in her husband’s political machine.

However, anyone familiar with her knows that the simple Remi could turn into a lioness when the interest of her husband is concerned. It is perhaps this interest that may have spurred some of the negative videos of her taking strong and indeed indecorous assertions against perceived political foes of her husband, notably Ndigbo.

So, given the very strong political exposure of the First Lady, many are concerned over the many gaffes that are coming from the administration and the All Progressives Congress, APC especially when women are concerned.

Indeed, in the advent of the Tinubu administration those who feared that age would be a bother for the president comforted themselves with the feeling that Remi will be there.

However, that assurance is being questioned with the many gaffes of the new government especially in appointments leading to what some senior party leaders are now calling the Women problem.  

Indeed, no administration in recent history has committed more gaffes in appointments than the Tinubu administration in its less than 90 days in office. Indeed, the administration made a record by undertaking a cabinet shakeup even before the inauguration of ministers!

This was despite the fact that our president had for years prepared for this office and after winning the election went abroad for weeks to plan for government.

The appointments, however, have been laced with much controversy and confusion. It is especially troubling that much of the confusion has come from some of the women appointed.

How can one believe that a lady was smuggled through the ministerial screening process to represent Kano, the home base of one of the president’s most faithful loyalists without the president knowing? Who had the audacity to do that?

There is no basis for the accusation of chauvinism given the fact that the insinuation that a significant proportion of the controversial female appointees got their lift through indecorous political pathways is coming from fellow APC ladies.

Long-standing women who campaigned and ploughed the political paths with Asiwaju are muttering that they are being pushed aside by women who either are not qualified or were not involved in the campaigns.

But not in all cases. The case of Hannatu Musawa, the new minister of arts who is a serving member of the NYSC is one that has to do more with lack of tact than of political exposure.

There are few who can contest the commitment of Ms Musawa to the Asiwaju Project. However, that a serving member of the NYSC was appointed a minister is a ringing indictment on the processes and procedures of the Tinubu administration. The Musawa saga is also being trailed by the appointment of a new National Woman Leader from outside the Cross River/Akwa Ibom Zone to which the office belonged to.

That appointment violated the succession principle in the APC Constitution as was done in the appointment of Dr Umar Ganduje as national chairman from the Northwest to succeed Senator Abdullahi Adamu from the North Central.

Last Thursday, Governor Yahaya Bello, another of the unpretentious Tinubu supporters led a siege to the Abuja residence of the APC national chairman over the NWC’s choice of a new officer from Kogi State.

It is remarkable that the government keeps a deaf ear to some of these indefensible actions in a way that is increasingly putting lifelong supporters of the president at bay.

It is at this point that one ordinarily should see Senator Remi Tinubu as first among the women who should come to steady the ship of state. But for whatever reason she has stayed back. Some say she apparently does not have the levers of power or the liver to stop those who are putting her family’s legacy into question.

Some like to see her as Senator Hilary Clinton who took up a prominent position in her husband’s administration. Yes, Mrs Clinton’s initiative on healthcare reforms flopped but no one would say she did not make any move. Some would even suggest that it was her decision to step out and lead the healthcare reforms that allowed strange women like Monica Lewinsky to defile her husband.

The good luck with Tinubu is that in all the gaffes about women in his new government there is nothing that has been traced to him in the way of immoral conduct on his person. All the insinuations are being traced to high aides. If Mrs Tinubu has decided to only maintain the integrity of the ‘other room’ she may be doing the nation a disservice given her legacy in transforming area boys and girls into good boys and girls. Nigeria needs all hands to be on deck at this time.

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