By Marindoti Oludare
Having read the interview granted by Hajia Naja’atu Muhammad, I have come to the conclusion that her summation is an attention-seeking, egocentric campaign of calumny. A few background check reveals she is someone with a track record of conceit and deceit. This is someone whose Wikipedia page reads “She claimed to have brought President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, into politics”. Her contradictory statements during the interview are tradecraft deception which should gain no reception in the eyes of rational folks.
Hajia Naja’atu’s claim of quitting party politics only to dangle her support for another presidential candidate shows a lack of political ideology and reeks of person in service of self. Her loyalty goes to the highest bidder. She claimed to have wanted to leave APC long time ago; the reason is yet unknown, However, her reasons were amenable to subtle persuasions.
She was more obsessed with her lack of recognition and gratification than her service to the people of quest for a better life for the people she claimed to represent. Had it been that she faulted one of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s plans, one might say she has an intellectual divergence and respect and is different in opinion. But she wanted Asiwaju to explain what she did to Buhari before agreeing to support his candidacy.
To her contradictions:
- He claimed asiwaju slept most of the time and she mostly spoke to Bisi Akande. Then she went ahead and said if you talk of green, he’ll give you an answer of red. This was someone she claimed was sleeping. However, because this claim came later in during the course of the interview, she had forgotten that she gave an account of detailed conversations she claimed to have had with Asiwaju.
She also threw in the usual unconscionable trope regarding Asiwaju’s medical condition. May I say this: “Momento Mori: Remember you must die”, when you die it will be because of a medical condition. We all will die from a medical condition. We can only pray that the condition that will take us does not beat or break us. Hajia Naja’atu; a graduate of Naja’atu Medical College has told not being able to hold a cup of tea is pathognomonic of Alzheimer’s disease. She claimed that her two hours interaction with Asiwaju (who has a camera with him 24 hours of the day) is evidence of dimentia. Dr Hajia Naja’atu made that diagnosis based on years of medical experience.
When they try to make fun of Asiwaju, what they are doing is making fun of everyone who truly is suffering from or has a relative that is suffering from this disease. It is wrong to try to ridicule someone because of their medical condition; you can descend to the pits of hell and even by the devil’s standards, that would still be wrong. I hope they find forgiveness in the face of God and I pray they never have to suffer from a medical condition.
We all have tremors to a varying degree, some people have a tendency to have more pronounced tremor than others and Essential Tremor has not been associated with any other medical condition. A condition that does not affect a man’s cognition is not exclusionary to leadership.
The most consequential President in the last 150 years history of the United States is Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). He is the longest serving president in their history (won 4 elections), got the United States out of the Great Depression and made them into the great economic powerhouse that they are now. He defeated Adolf Hitler and the fascist movement, he started social security, was the first president to employ black men into the federal government; he started the civil rights movement, etc.
Need I mention that he was also a former governor of New York, the financial hub of the United States?
I see a great deal of similarities between these two giants of humanity.
Asiwaju, like FDR, is a former governor of Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre. Nigeria faces dire straits, an economic depression and a grave security situation like America did when FDR was elected and just like FDR, Asiwaju will lead Nigeria out of all these predicaments and set Nigeria on a path to eternal prosperity.
*Oludare, a Nigerian US-based medical doctor, is National Coordinator/Convener of Social Rehabilitation Gruppe (SRG). He wrote in from Texas.