I at first thought it was amusing political theatre when I heard of the appointment of Balaraba Ibrahim as Special Assistant on Women Affairs [Unmarried] to the Governor of Bauchi State. I however sat up and paid attention when I saw online a copy of her appointment letter signed by Mohammed Baba, Secretary to the Bauchi State Government. Dated August 4, 2020, it had an intimidating official reference number, GO/SS/POL/S/83.
Governor Bala Abdulkadir Mohammed apparently has a Special Adviser and Special Assistants, maybe even a Commissioner, on Women Affairs. He clearly thought they were not adequate to cover this all-important constituency so he added this new assistant. SSG Baba told Ms. Ibrahim that “The appointment is based on your knowledge, experience and personal qualities of hard work, honesty and absolute loyalty.” He urged her to bring them to bear in her new task.
The most relevant knowledge and experience, apparently, is that she too is an unmarried woman, a divorcee to be precise. She who wears the shoe, knows where it pinches. Ms. Ibrahim is [or was] Chairperson, Association of Divorcees in Bauchi State. Last year her association set up counselling centres for intending couples in Bauchi State “in an effort to address challenges leading to broken homes.”
Whether she was qualified to counsel on broken homes is a different matter. I am just wondering; between the person who emerged from a broken home and the person who managed to avoid a broken home, who is better qualified to counsel on the ways of avoiding a broken home?
Related: Bauchi gov appoints Balaraba Ibrahim ‘Special Assistant on Divorcees’
The new Special Assistant however has relevant knowledge up her sleeve. She said in a recent interview that there is shortage of men for women to marry in Bauchi State. This assertion by the SA is debatable. There is no shortage of men in Bauchi State; what is in short supply is the money for them to fill several boxes with clothes, cosmetics and shoes before prospective parents-in-law will regard them as suitable suitors. If only Bauchi State’s powerful Muslim clerics will do a fatwa and lift that requirement, there will be an overnight doubling in the number of available husbands.
Ms. Ibrahim also announced that results of a survey that her association conducted in Bauchi State’s 20 local government areas listed the major causes of divorce to include lack of empowerment skills, unemployment, poverty and early marriage. Some husbands, she said, were not discharging their marital responsibilities which include “proper feeding, clothing and shelter of their spouses.”
As a former researcher myself, my only worry with this survey is that it did not ask divorced men for their own accounts. Apart from blaming economic recession, pandemic and lockdown, they were likely to say that some wives were not discharging their marital responsibilities, as we used to read about in the old Lagos Weekend newspaper. Next time, SA, please tell your researchers to balance their samples if you really intend to arrive at a workable solution to the problem of broken homes.
The other little problem that I foresee is that, within the large and diverse circle of unmarried women, Ms. Ibrahim is narrowly specialized on divorcees. Widows and spinsters are a major part of her schedule of duties. In sheer number, spinsters outnumber divorcees. Her boss the governor, who is shrewdly counting the number of voters ahead of 2023, is keenly aware of that. For another thing, the needs of the various sub-groups within the huge circle of unmarried women could vary widely. Which is why I advise Ms. Ibrahim to fire off a memo to the SSG and make a case for ten Assistant Special Assistants to the SA, each in charge of a particular area of needed action.
These special areas include 1] smart phones, a major desire of most spinsters 2] Instagram, the most popular place to post pictures from smart phones 3] cosmetics, the best way for a Nigerian woman to feel good 4] birthday parties, the best way to announce that you have arrived and 5] anko, the best way to identify with a sister or friend during her ceremony.
Other areas of serious need, each of which should be manned [womanned, beg your pardon] by an Assistant Special Assistant include 6] Small Scale Enterprises, which in Nigeria are often a front for socialising 7] relocating to Abuja, which makes people to hold you in high esteem even if you are not doing anything there 8] hajj, which greatly enhances a Bauchi girl’s social status 9] shopping trip to Dubai, the only other thing that rivals hajj in status enhancement and finally 10] getting a husband, which takes you out of Ms. Ibrahim’s schedule of duties. But never mind. Other Departments of the Ministry of Women Affairs will then receive you with open arms.
WHAT MANNER OF “CONDOLENCE”?
If Nigerians were amused last week by the appointment of a Special Assistant on Unmarried Women in Bauchi, they must had been shocked and flabbergasted by the condolence letter, if it was one, that came out of Ogun State. Except that the letter’s author was one that had long ceased to amaze Nigerians.
Hours after the death from COVID-19 complications in a Lagos hospital of Senator Buruji Kashamu, former President Olusegun Obasanjo fired off a “condolence letter” to Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun. He wrote, “Senator Esho Jinadu (Buruji Kashmu) in his lifetime used the maneuver of law and politics to escape from facing justice on alleged criminal offence in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. But no legal, political, cultural, social or even medical maneuver could stop the cold hand of death when the Creator of all of us decides that the time is up.”
Subhanallah. This was the harshest condolence message in Nigeria since 1998, when Chief Gani Fawehinmi was heard on BBC commenting on the death of General Sani Abacha earlier that day. Gani said, “Good riddance to bad rubbish! He was a bloodthirsty dictator, murderer, a thief…May the gates of Hell be opened wide enough for him!”
Gani refused to agree that death ends quarrels and is a time for sober reflection. Obasanjo too believes likewise. He and Kashamu had a bitter personal/ political quarrel for many years. Obasanjo once described Kashamu as a drug baron, for which the latter sued for slander. Indeed, NDLEA tried three years ago to arrest Kashamu and deport him to the United States to face charges for alleged drug trafficking. According to the now late Senator however, his quarrel with Obasanjo was because he had made the former politically irrelevant in their native Ogun State.
Before Gani’s eulogy, the harshest condolence message I ever saw was in 1984, what Peter Enahoro wrote about Guinean President Ahmadou Sekou Toure on the pages of Africa Now magazine. Peter Pan began by quoting Shakespeare, who wrote that the evil that men do lives after them, and the good is interred with their bones. It is actually the reverse, Peter Pan wrote; African leaders would be falling over themselves to pay tribute to Sekou Toure and forget his evil deeds, including incarcerating his former Foreign Minister and first OAU Secretary General Diallo Telli in a dark underground cell until he went blind.
Before Peter Pan, there was this shocking condolence message in the late 1980s that Tai Solarin wrote for the just departed Prof Sanya Onabamiro. They apparently grew up together, because Tai detailed incidents right from primary school when he said the future great Professor of Parasitology stoned his headmaster, to a time when protesting villagers, according to Tai, stopped the then Western State Commissioner for Education from visiting his hometown.
I will not mention others, which were published in a Nigerian Tribune article. These days, an editor will probably refuse to publish such an article, which the author can then post online, where anything goes.
