by Alexander O. Onukwue

Minister of Women Affairs, Aisha Jumain Alhassan, has dropped the biggest hint yet that all is not well within the circles of the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

In a recorded video of her Sallah visit to former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, Mrs Alhassan vows loyalty to Atiku as her ‘godfather’ who will be Nigeria’s President come 2019. As if to dispel any doubts that it was indeed her words, the Minister, who is responsible for the rehabilitation of returned Boko Haram girls, strongly re-iterated her remarks as captured on the video.

“I can assure you that if Baba Buhari tells us today that he wants to re-contest, I swear to God I will go to him and tell him ‘Baba, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to work under you as minister. But Baba as you know, Atiku is my godfather’. That’s if Atiku wants to contest, but as we speak, he (Atiku) hasn’t told us he wants to contest” as the Daily Trust quotes Mrs Alhassan to have said.

As the first Minister to publicly make a remark of such a stunning nature, distancing herself from the possible continuity of the Buhari Government, Mrs Alhassan could be setting off a potential stream of political deserters who may seek to re-align themselves in view of the 2019 hostilities. Atiku is believed to be a target of the PDP, among many other persons, and given his comments about the decline of his role in the ruling party, the potential for the move back to the party he helped found in 1999 may have spurred the Honourable Minister to make her pledge of allegiance this early.

There are other persons in the APC, besides, Atiku, who are believed to have ambitions for the Presidency come 2019. Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has played down on comments that envisage he will be an aspirant, but the feeling that he has the ambition remains. Other persons include the Governors of Kaduna and Sokoto state, Nasir El-Rufai and Waziri Tambuwal, and the former Kano State Governor, Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.

Even if El-Rufai would say that he ran for the Government House in Kaduna on Buhari’s instruction, he and the others mentioned above are men who are political godfathers to some people too, and it would be interesting to see if the godchildren start declaring support for them after the manner of Minister Alhassan.

Op-ed Editor