Nigeria Content Online

Rotimi Amaechi, the Governor of Rivers state,
should thank his stars that he did not look Mrs. Patience Jonathan –
they say she’s a Dame – directly in the eyes during her recent trip to
Rivers state. He would have turned to stone for such are the mortifying
powers of this latest nightmarish entrant into Nigeria’s gory pantheon
of lawless, uncontrollable, and overbearing first ladies. Perhaps her
handlers in Abuja told her that she was going on a lecture tour of her
home state to teach the Governor how to govern a state?

Mrs. Jonathan had gone to Rivers state to launch
her pet project and do other ego-massaging stuff that first ladies are
wont to do on such occasions. The issue of Governor Amaechi’s
demolition exercise in her home town of Okrika came up and this is when
Mrs. Jonathan assumed the role of Mater Dolorosa of her people. She
disagreed openly with the Governor’s explanations, upbraided him
angrily, lectured him on the virtue of dialogue, and taught him some
grammar to boot! Mrs. Jonathan’s misbehaviour in Rivers state last week
is a blessing in disguise for it has once again placed the insufferable
illegality of the contraption called first ladyship at the centre of
our national conversation. Just two weeks ago, I had written about the
brigandage of another lawless first lady, Funke Daniel, of Ogun state
who went to terrorize an Ogun citizen with instruments of state and
appurtenances of power that would still have been illegal were her
husband to have deployed them with such galling disregard for due
process and the law.

Nigerians are sufficiently familiar with ritual
enactments of lawlessness by these so-called first ladies. There is no
need to do a laundry list of their transgressions here. One must
mention in passing their effeminate husbands who are never able to rein
in their wives and make them obey the law once they rig themselves into
office or once some benevolent spirits crack their palm kernels for
them and they find themselves in office (apologies to Achebe). Imagine
Goodluck Jonathan instructing the Inspector General of police to
instruct the Rivers state police commissioner to instruct the SSS to
investigate what happened between his wife and Governor Amaechi and
report back to him! We are lucky that Mr. Jonathan did not propose a
supplementary budget appropriation to fund a high-powered commission of
inquiry to look into the remote, immediate, and intermediate causes of
his wife’s misbehaviour in Rivers state. Whatever happened to that part
where a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do? Whatever happened to that
part where you tell madam in plain and simple language in the bedroom
that state governors are not pupils to be supervised by the
non-existent office of the first lady? Whatever happened to that part
where oga tells madam that what she did in Rivers state was way beyond
her remit?

And just what exactly are the police officers that
he has sent on this risible investigation errand supposed to tell Mr.
President? “Em, oga presido come o. Yawa dey o. E be like say madam
Patience dey lie when she deny say she no harass the governor o?” In
Nigeria? I’m afraid Mr. Jonathan is wasting our time. He knows that
those police officers will tell him what he wants to hear.

Reuben Abati has blamed Rotimi Amaechi for
abandoning the running of his state to attend to Mrs. Jonathan in the
first place. After all, the overbearing visitor is not recognised in
the Constitution and a governor has no business going to do “yes ma yes
ma” all over the place. He should have sent Mrs. Amaechi to do small
talk with the visitor. Abati is only partly right though. The greater
blame lies with the followership, starting with Mr. Abati’s
constituency, the media.

Abnormality does not exist or operate ex nihilo.
Its actuation depends entirely on the discourses of legitimation it
garners among the followership. That is what accords it hegemony. The
irritating characters in our rulership are not the ones who have
legitimized the aberration of first ladyship in our polity. We, the
people, are the complicit legitimizers of this open sore of a country.
The irrationalities and the imbecilities of the rulership are
stabilized and normalized in our subconscious when we sheepishly
describe and talk about such acts in the language of normality.

I once described such subterranean legitimation of
the irrational acts of the rulership in the speech acts of the
followership as making concessions to the oppressor in the field of
meaning. If you doubt me, do a review of media descriptions and online
discussions of Patience Jonathan’s misbehaviour in Rivers state.
Virtually every newspaper called it a “state visit” or an “official
visit”. That is nonsense. The same applies to media descriptions of the
frequent ego trips of the wives of state governors. You hear that the
first lady of a given state is on a “state visit” or an “official
visit” to local government areas of the state to commission projects.

Mrs. Jonathan and her juniors in the state capitals do not qualify
to be on “state visits” to anywhere. They are not recognized by the
Constitution. The generalized practice of describing the money-guzzling
jamborees of these overbearing first ladies as “state visits” or
“official visits” is a tragic role that we, the people, play in
legitimizing elite stupidity. If Mrs Jonathan’s fawning aides and
handlers treat us like fools by packaging her trips as “state visits”,
must we concede meaning to them by accepting that illegal description?
As the Yoruba saying goes: blessed is he who tries to make a fool of
you and woe unto him who accepts to be treated like a fool.