Buhari’s wife not a political tout –Campaign team

The Director, Media and Information Technology,
Buhari Campaign Organisation, Dr. Chidia
Maduekwe, has said that the wife of the
presidential candidate of the All Progressives
Congress, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.),
will not join the First Lady, Dame Patience
Jonathan, to play political thuggery, because she
is not a tout
Maduekwe, in an interview with Saturday PUNCH
in Abuja on Thursday, said, “You should know it
is beneath the person of our respected General’s
wife to join issues with Dame Patience Jonathan.
“Mrs. Jonathan has clearly shown that she lacks
the discipline and composure required of the
occupant of the office of the First Lady. It is
neither the General’s style nor is his Madam’s
style to join Mrs. Jonathan to play the role of
political tout.
“Mrs. Buhari is too refined and well groomed to
descend to the level of insulting someone else’s
husband in the name of politics.
“There is this adage which says you don’t run
after a mad person who took your cloth while you
were taking your bath because those who see you
running after the mad person may not distinguish
between the mad person and you.” The campaign
organisation was reacting to a report that Mrs.
Jonathan said Buhari might be brain dead
because of his age at a campaign rally in Lokoja,
the Kogi State capital, on Tuesday.
Patience had said that old people might not
reason very well because of their ageing mind.
She said, “Vote for my husband, Jonathan. Do not
vote for Buhari. He is an old man. People, when
they become old, may not reason well and their
brain may even be dead.”
Reacting to Mrs. Jonathan’s comments on Buhari,
Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on
Diaspora Affairs, Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa, also
described her as “an embarrassment to Nigerians
and Nigeria.”
Dabiri-Erewa, who is a cognate member of the
APC in the House, said, Mrs. Jonathan was not
only “crude” in her actions, but her utterances
had taken away the “poise” associated with the
office of the First Lady.
She said of all Nigeria’s First Ladies, Mrs.
Jonathan remained the “worst.”
Dabiri-Erewa said, “Mrs. Jonathan is an
embarrassment to the whole country. The only
people shouting her praise or listening to her are
the sycophants; outside them, nobody else does.
“She is crude and unrefined. When you travel out
of the country, Nigerians keep asking you how we
came this bad.”
Another member of the Buhari campaign, who
asked not to be named, told Saturday PUNCH ,
“Mrs. Buhari does not have a structure different
from that of General Buhari.
“The campaign has already responded copiously
to the reckless statement by Mrs. Jonathan.
Besides, the general’s wife accompanied her
husband on the trip to London.”
In a statement signed by the APC’s campaign’s
Director of Media and Publicity, Mallam Garba
Shehu, in Abuja on Wednesday, the party said the
President’s wife was insultive.
The APC campaign urged President Jonathan to
caution his wife.