“I don’t know exactly what party my wife belongs to. Actually she belongs in the kitchen, the living room and the other rooms in my house,” Buhari told reporters with a chuckle after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Mrs. Buhari told the BBC in an interview published on Friday that she might not back her husband in the next election unless he shakes up his government.
“He is yet to tell me but I have decided as his wife, that if things continue like this up to 2019, I will not go out and campaign again and ask any woman to vote like I did before. I will never do it again,” she said.
The soft spoken Aisha Buhari in a BBC Hausa interview said that Buhari’s government has been hijacked by cabal who are “behind presidential appointments”.
She lamented that most of the officials of the government are known to the President and the first family, adding that they are usurpers who did nothing to help All Progressive Congress struggle in 2015.
Asked to name those who had hijacked the government, Aisha Buhari smiled and declared that “you will know them if you watch television.”
Mrs Buhari posited “the President does not know 45 out of 50, for example, of the people he appointed and I don’t know them either despite being his wife for 27 years.”
President Buhari, a 73-year-old former military ruler, was elected last year after a campaign largely fought on his pledge to crush the Islamist militant group Boko Haram and crack down on corruption.
Nigeria, which has Africa’s largest economy, is in recession for the first time in 25 years, largely due to a fall global oil prices that has slashed the state’s main source of income.
Buhari said his government was continuing to fight to combat major economic, security and corruption problems it inherited.
He said the government had made strides in fighting Boko Haram, which is now active in just 14 of 177 regions of the country, and was working to combat militant groups in the Niger Delta.
Buhari also said Nigeria would continue working to free the remaining girls kidnapped by the jihadist group Boko Haram in 2014 after the group on Thursdayreleased 21 girls on Thursday.
“About 100 more (girls) are still in the hands of the terrorists. We hope we’ll get some … intelligence to go about securing the balance.”
Buhari said Nigeria was grateful for the help of the United Nations for its help in trying to free the girls, but that Nigeria still faced massive consequences from the group’s power and influences, including up to 2 million people internally displaced refugees, including many children.
Despite the problems, Nigeria – the most populous nation in Africa – would be able to produce enough food for its own population of 185 million people, and start exporting food in about 1-1/2 years, Buhari said.
Merkel said the European Union would begin negotiations with Nigeria this month about a migration deal to ensure it could repatriate Nigerian citizens denied asylum in EU countries.
She emphasised the importance of focusing resources on those people fleeing wars rather than those looking for better economic conditions.
Comments are closed.