Patience Jonathan, Please Ignore Them
Taofeek Adio implores the First Lady, Patience Jonathan, to ignore her detractors and concentrate on the all-important task of getting her husband re-elected
Dear Patience Jonathan, our dear First Lady, permit me to use this public medium, in place of face-to-face meeting, to convey my message to you because I know that right now you are extremely busy in mobilising support for your husband, who is seeking re-election, having performed so brilliantly well in spite of the evil machinations against him by the enemies of progress.
I also chose this medium to reach you because I want my message to get to your detractors, who are envious of your strides since you became Nigeria’s First Lady and are doing their utmost to discredit you so that they may, God willing, repent and mend their ways.
These people have been spreading all kinds of malicious lies and twisting whatever you say in the cause of mobilising support for your husband to suit their evil desire. It is my intention, therefore, through this medium to encourage you to discountenance their ranting and face squarely the task before you, which is to secure a second mandate for your husband. It is a task that must be done if Nigeria’s stability is to be maintained.
Let me inform Your Excellency, that I have seen and read the diatribe made by journalist-turned politician, Dele Momodu, who pretends to be one of your admirers and another by one Inibehe Effiong, (I don’t know if this one is real or a robot) disparaging you for certain campaign statements you reportedly made.
These two people gave themselves away for in their two separate public letters to you, they addressed virtually the same issues. Is Momodu the same person as Inibehe or both are part of the same hired cast put together by some organised cabal to spew the same fallacies against your person?
Why I tended to think this way, my First Lady, is because similar theatrics was displayed in your Okrika encounter with Rotimi Amaechi, in which within 24 hours, the armada of the press was unleashed on you via newspaper column, editorial and special report even before the news of the happening had been digested, analysed and cross-checked.
I am constrained, therefore, to think that somebody somewhere is afraid of Your Excellency’s mobilisation prowess and is therefore pulling the strings to stop you before you go far in delivering them a perilous electoral punch.
In both pieces by Momodu and Inihebe, they brought up two old issues which had become a mantra in newspapers and social media to background some new ones. The first was the Okrika incident in which, against contrary facts, they claimed you snatched a microphone from Governor Amaechi even when the video clip shown afterwards did not reflect that.
They also claimed that you lampooned Amaechi like a weeping school boy, when all you did was to try to educate him about the sensitive nature of land matters among Okrikans, whose entire landscape had shrunk because the ocean had almost eaten up all and entreating him not to take away the little land the people hold dear to their lives.
This Okrika land matter had been overblown and propagated with impunity by the hawkers in the press, yet Momodu and Inihebe would not let go because it pays their masters that they are recalled in this present circumstance.
The second old issue they brought up was the Wole Soyinka saga. Wole Soyinka several times had called you unprintable names and they think, in their wise counsel, you ought not to reply the canonised god of the pen. I do not recall that anyone heard you make any personal comment about the white-haired professor, who sometimes befuddles us all with his weird statements on national issues, yet you must be vilified for no crime of yours.
Even beyond Wole Soyinka, many hired undertakers had been conscripted by those who hate your guts to continue to devalue your personality. There had been several invectives poured on you in the newspapers and the social media by many charlatans but you maintained your peace, not because you were afraid of them, but because you knew that as charlatans, they had nothing good to spend their time with.
Was there any First Lady in Nigeria’s history that has suffered untold indignities as you? Yet, in the spirit of motherhood, you did not threaten to bring down the roof or threaten your traducers with fire and brimstone. They even wished you death many times, but God in his infinite mercy has preserved your life to the shame of your detractors.
It is in the light of all these sins committed against you that I want to bring up the comment they claimed you made on the APC presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari.
Now, everyone knows that this is campaign time and every campaigner seeks whatever will make him or her outshine the opponent.
We know how in the course of this electioneering, the opposition has thoroughly maligned you and your husband and sought to diminish your worth, but you have not for once raised dust over this. The current whimpering by the rented APC hirelings only shows how intolerant they are, and it buttresses the fact that they are not fit to lead if they fret every time someone says something that their ear detests.
They have even gone to the ridiculous level of writing the International Criminal Court over an innocuous statement credited to you. My advice, Your Excellency, is that you continue to ignore them as you have always done. When they are done with their newspaper articles and petitions, they will settle to face the realities that no amount of their adversarial postings will save them from shame when the time comes for them to reap the fruits of their despicable acts.
May I remind Your Excellency that God has endowed you with a special gift that many among your detractors dislike. This gift is the belief you have in yourself and your conscience, pursuing what you know is good for yourself, your husband, your family, your community and the nation. You are also endowed with a rare courage to speak your mind whatever the odds, a gift many lack. Your involvement in the political aspiration of your husband and helping to stabilise his government is legendary and has precedence in other lands. This is a unique trait you have brought to first ladyship in Nigeria, a development your worst enemy cannot remove from your person.
Also, your prowess for grassroots mobilisation is legendary. We recall the women’s mega rally which you organised in 2013 which drew over 30,000 women from across the length and breadth of Nigeria. This unique feat drew tears from the eyes of your adversaries, who cried to the high heaven that the women’s rally prevented them from going round to earn their daily bread even though the women’s road show followed only a designated route and lasted only for some hours.
I could go on and on, but my attempt on this catalogue is only to illustrate to Your Excellency that you have no cause to look back, but to follow the dictates of your good conscience. No human being and this even your traducers know.
Finally, I wish to appeal to all those who take delight in disparaging Patience Jonathan to mend their ways. Men who take delight in maligning somebody else’s wife are certainly not the best of men-folk. Most likely, they may be the type that takes pleasure in wife-bashing and seeing women as mere chattel.