At Last, First Lady, Aisha Buhari Returns To Abuja

Aisha Buhari, Wife of Nigeria’s President returned to Nigeria from London on Saturday, where she had kept a disquieting quiet for about two months, triggering an assortment of speculations and rumours from Nigerians.

She tweeted her homeward journey on Saturday night, thanking Modupe Oguntade, the wife of Nigeria’s high commissioner in United Kingdom for seeing her off.

” Thank you so much madam”, Aisha wrote

However, there had been speculations about her status as the nation’s First Lady.

Rumour mongers claimed that President Buhari was to marry the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, as his second wife.

Though the ‘wedding’ never took place, many worshippers trooped to the Presidential Villa Mosque on Friday where the President went to observe the Jumat prayer with the hope of witnessing the rumoured wedding.

Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, also dismissed the rumour.

Aisha left Nigeria in August for the Hajj.
She did not return home and instead stayed away in London.

The First Lady’s prolonged absence at the Villa became pronounced as she did not attend public functions that she ordinarily would have attended.

She was said to have been absent during the mid-August Eid-el-Kabir celebration in Daura, Katsina State, even though her husband was around to welcome world leaders such as the President of Guinea, Alpha Conde.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Administration, Dr Hajo Sani, had reportedly been representing the First Lady on a number of occasions of recent, including an event of the Organisation of African First Ladies for Development, which held on September 25, 2019 on the sidelines of the 74th United Nations General Assembly in New York, United States.

Aisha had publicly raised issues with her husband’s administration, including stating that persons who did not contribute to her husband’s election victory were calling the shots at the Presidency.

She had also canvassed more roles for women in government, specifically asking the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to ensure that more women and card-carrying members of the party were given prominent positions in the government after Buhari won a re-election in February.

The President’s wife had also criticised some of the administration’s policies, including the N500bn Social Investment Programme, which she said had failed “woefully” in the North in particular.

Aisha, who hails from Adamawa State, had noted in May 2019 that the situation in her home state, as far as the implementation was concerned, was pathetic.