The lady doth protest too much! So the president’s other half, Patience in her inestimable candid humility would like the Senate and the House of Reps to pass the budget of N4 billion earmarked for her “pet” project- The Ladies Mission House. This edifice she tells us will be left for the people of Nigeria and she in her words “will not carry the building with her when her tenure ends”.
Her tenure? Who does she think she is? I mean, did the people of Nigeria vote her in or did they vote for her husband? Suddenly this “fascinating” woman has developed the taste for power.
It seems she has declared herself the mistress of all she surveys. She has rewritten her past even if it is in bad taste and disrespectful to most Nigerians. She does not seem to have a control valve, nor does her husband who indulges her to use the wealth of Nigeria as her play things.
In a country where the mortality rate is distressingly low and the majority of the population are barely making a crust, she has the temerity to display such opulence and wealth. In the presence of the who is who of stupendous wealth and power they gather in the court of their empress to pay their respects and rub shoulders with like-minded people.
While the men of the cloth and women politicians and the rest of the sycophants fall over themselves to be at her beck and call. What? Surely no one wants to attend this show of opulent debauchery? If their conscience served them well they should have politely declined the invite.
What they have done with their presence is to endorse the disgraceful show of excessive living while majority of Nigerians are struggling to make ends meet. Could she not find a cause that could make so much difference in the lives of our people? Does she know over one million children die every year and 14% of childbearing age dies giving birth?
If she does feel deeply about the people, then you would have hope that she will do whatever she can to make a change in the lives of the young and women in Nigeria. Does she know that life expectancy for a male in Nigeria is 48.95 and for female is 52.02? Most would not even live that long without affordable access to good health care. Nigeria is not
working and the overpaid and underworked ruling elite are complicit to the present state that Nigeria is in. So pardon me, I fail to see her purpose other than aggrandizing, flaunting wealth and power. What really has she done? She is either clueless or unfeeling, either way, she does not really care about ordinary Nigerians and she clearly does not care about Nigerian women.
Resurgence of Lazarus
The resurgence of Lazarus by the fragrant lady as she describes it, made her want to rededicate her life to the less privilege. Of course, like any other megalomania she throws a party for her subjects. So this politician with no portfolio has decided that she wants the biggest prize of all, a building for her mission and we should be lucky that Nigeria has this opportunity she tells us, no consultation, no nothing what Patience wants, Patience gets.
While she makes and throws down nonsensical tirade one after the other, the president watches, without flinching and offers her offer no real direction as to where this runaway train is going to stop. Her proposed Ladies Mission house will be like the Basilica of Yamoussoukro.
A hare brain while elephant dreamed up by the then president of Ivory Coast, President Félix Houphouët-Boigny. The man used up $300million of their countries’ meagre resources to build some outrageous buildings that were not exactly suited to the climate, but which very much suited her ego. It is all about ego, wanting to build a monument to herself .
Her justification that other first ladies had done similar project: built hospital, a women centre. So how impertinent are the senate to deny her the means to build her memorial? She argues that it creates employment for the youth. There are no consultations of why the building is needed.
And for good measure she slammed the men that if it were a male project it would have been granted and approved.No, this lady is deluded. In this trying times people need the means to work their way out of poverty and no purpose other than to satisfy an overblown ego.
If that was not enough to entice women she had promise them, 70 per cent of women in Nigeria will be employed by March. How is that possible? She tells her listeners that they too can be presidents, governors of the country one day.
Her side kick, PDP through the National Women’s Leader, Dr. Kema Chikwe, has laid it out for the gullible, that the president is very much a woman’s president who will increase womens’ participation by 50% by 2015!
She said: “We are even more confident that when President Goodluck Jonathan returns in 2015, women would be talking about 50 percent, no longer 35 percent. As we give him unequivocal, undiluted, unreserved and unlimited support and as we march with him to 2015, PDP women will reach the promised land.”
