BUHARI’S RUMOURED WEDDING, THIRD TERM BID
Rumours of a Third Term and a Wedding

FOR much of July 2011, as I reported on this page back then, nothing filled me with so much foreboding as a telephone call from Nigeria, or from a fellow expatriate Nigerian in the United States.

Not that I dreaded being woken up at 3 o’clock in the morning by an insistent phone call informing me that the son of my grand-aunt’s younger nephew has secured admission to the Federal University of Kutuwengi’s coveted programme in cassava technology, and that unless I cabled the sum of N100, 000 immediately by way of a non-refundable deposit, the offer would go to another.

I had been given a tutorial by a fellow expatriate Nigerian on how to handle such matters.

“Tell the caller,” my tutor counseled, “tell the caller how genuinely delighted you are that the youngest son of your grand-aunt’s nephew had secured a place in the prohibitively competitive cassava technology programme at UniKutuwengi (UK).

Impress it upon the caller that the young man is even more fortunate in other ways because the vice chancellor of UK is your bosom friend and the professor of cassava propagation, who also happens to be the dean of the faculty of cassava technology, is none other than your favourite brother-in-law.”

Then, the clincher: “Tell the caller to ask the young man to kindly send for ease of reference, a copy of his letter of admission so that you could cable the deposit directly to your good friend the vice chancellor at UK, or to the professor of cassava propagation.

“You would never hear from them again,” my tutor had assured me.

My discomfiture stemmed from the previously rumoured, speculated, suspected, widely-believed, and finally incipient “Third Term.”

Whenever the phone rang and I identified a Nigerian voice at the other end, I began to have that sinking feeling. I could feel it in my bones that the caller had nothing other than the so-called “Third Term” on his mind. And I was right for the most part.

The calls usually began on a casual, even languid note, with “Bawo ni?” or “Hao nao?” But I had learned not to be fooled by such a gambit, nor by the preliminaries that followed, no matter how diverting or long-drawn.

Not a moment too soon, the callers got going.

“How is Baba these days?” they would ask casually, almost absent-mindedly.

“Which Baba?” I would reply, spoiling for an opening to play interrogator.

“Baba President,” they would rejoin. OBJ.”

“How would I know from this distance? Why don’t you ask Femi Fani-Kayode?”

“Ah!” the callers would exclaim in terror. “He will curse the daylight out of us for daring to ask.”

“No, he won’t,” I would assure them. “As a born-again Christian and an ordained deacon, Femi Fani-Kayode doesn’t curse. And if you are only asking after Baba’s health and not dabbling into the great issues of state, he will thank you for your interest in Baba and praise you for your patriotism. He might even pencil you down for a federal appointment.”

“From all that I have read and heard, Baba has not said he is interested in a Third Term,” I would tell them with as much conviction as I could muster.

“If he is not interested, why can’t he come out straight to say so and thus put an end to all the speculation and all the nasty things people have been saying about him?”

“For reasons of state, no doubt. Raison d’état. But I can’t speak for Baba. You really must

ask Chief Fani-Kayode. I can give you his phone number.”

A second invocation of that name was usually enough to dissuade the caller from pursuing this pesky inquiry.

The conversations — such as they were — with callers who opened with a “Hao nao?” usually took a different tack. No dancing around; they went straight into business.

“Nna, this Third-Term thing is now spreading like bush fire. What’s the latest?”

“My brother, this avian ’flu is a really terrible thing,” I would reply. “Just imagine, our people can’t even eat ordinary chicken again. Our poultry farmers are finished. Hundreds of thousands of birds dead. And now there is the fear that humans may be afflicted too. It is really terrible.”

“Na so we see am o,” my brother. Very sad. But this is about Obasanjo’s Third-Term plot.

“Alleged plot,” I would cut in.

“Alleged my foot,” one such caller shot back, aspirating with a force that almost blew out my eardrum. “Your Yoruba people have endorsed it. Are you saying they have endorsed a mere allegation?”

“It’s the governors of the Yoruba-speaking states that endorsed it. The South-South, South-East governors have also endorsed it Even Ohanaeze has embraced it. And it cannot be long before the Arewa people follow suit. “Senator Ibrahim Mantu who coordinated consultations across the country has said that everywhere he went, he found a strong national consensus favouring a Third, and possibly a Fourth Term.

“The whole thing began like a crazy joke. And now, it looks as if they just might pull it off, like this is some banana republic. How did they do it?”

“You must ask Andy Uba. And Tony Anenih, the master fixer. I can give you Anenih’s GSM number.”

No response.

“Hello. . . . Hello. . .”

Still no response. End of conversation

These were persons hoping to enter party politics one day. It must have been drilled into them that the fear of The Fixer is the fundamental law of political practice in Nigeria.

Memories of these skirmishes came flooding back when it was bruited the other day that President Muhammadu Buhari might seek a Third Term. Handbills and posters soon surfaced in Abuja and elsewhere urging Buhari to bid for a Third Term, even as the Next Level Agenda for his present and last term as consecrated in the Constitution is yet to gain traction. A motley crowd of placard-carrying Third-Term protagonists put an exclamation mark on the matter.

The Presidency has disavowed any such intent. Yet the rumours have persisted.

And I suspect that now, as in 2011, it would be a matter of time before I am inundated with requests for insight and analysis on the matter, even though I do not relate to Buhari the way I related to former President Obasanjo.

But that is the least of my worries. I am concerned with the far more treacherous terrain ahead.

Lately, they have been linking His Excellency the President and the Honorable Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Intervention and Social Development Sadiya Umar Farouk, romantically. They even went so far as to put it about that they were to be joined in matrimony last Friday.

This purported heads-up sent the Muslim faithful, all manner of supplicants and those seeking nothing but voyeuristic thrill flocking to the National Mosque in Abuja to witness the historic event.

They all went home disappointed.

In the wake of all this, Buhari’s wife Aisha, who had been away in the UK ended her extended vacation in the UK and returned to Nigeria.

Requests for my reactions to these developments as a veteran public affairs analyst cannot be long in coming, I fear.

Here, upfront, is my response: I am not aware of any link between the alleged presidential dalliance and Aisha Buhari’s precipitate return to base. I have no thoughts, no comments, and no insights whatsoever regarding these developments, nor what they portend for a Third Term or The Other Room.

I will not let anyone goad me into perdition.

The floods now devouring large swathes of the country are going to keep the Hon Minister for Disaster Relief fully engaged for a long time.

So, rest easy, all ye stakeholders.