What may appear as a scandal to some people, especially those on the other side of the political divide other than that of President Muhammadu Buhari, is brewing in the Presidency.
The President’s wife, Hajiya Aisha, has invited the authorities to arrest her Aide De Camp (ADC), accusing him of defrauding people through the taking undue advantage of his closeness to her.
The President’s wife alledged that her ADC Sani Baba-Inna, a chief superintendent of police, was in the habit of dropping her name, through which he had collected huge donations from politicians and businessmen.
She requested the police to arrest and retrieves from her ADC and refund to the owners’ money estimated at about N2.5 billion.
Consequently, her ADC was arrested, last week, and he remains in detention since then.
As expected, she disassociated herself from the activities of CSP Sani BabanInna, who is currently being detained by the operatives of the State Security Service (SSS).
In a statement issued by the Director of Information in the Office of the Wife of the President, Suleiman Haruna, Mrs Buhari said she has never asked anybody to collect anything from any politician or public office holder on her behalf.
The statement read said that CSP Sani Baban-Inna has been with A’isha as her ADC since 2016 but to the utter dismay of Her Excellency, he has used the opportunity to defraud unsuspecting associates and officials.
A’iaha said she wishes “to inform the general public that she has never sent any of her staff to collect any favours on her behalf or on behalf of her children and will never do so.” Significantly, Mrs Buhari said, as we all expected her to, that she will not “condone fraudulent behavior” by any of her staff.
And this is the crux of the matter – the ability not to condone fraudulent behaviour, otherwise known as corruption, a practice that has, especially in the last few years became deeply entrenched in national milieu, perverted social and moral values and threatened citizens and the country’s political and economic survival.
Corruption became widely and deeply rooted in the socio-economic system and made occupation of governmental offices particularly attractive to politicians and other categories of Nigerians mainly because doing so brings with it numerous undue advantages.
One of such undue advantages, of course, is the like of which the ADC of the wife of the President had unduly took advantage of and which Aisha has now exposed.
Yet, as monumental as that form of corruption seems, it is certainly one of the least that can be associated with a spouse of Nigerian sitting President.
Of course, it goes without saying that notoriously corrupt officials employ the services of their aides to perpetrate corruption on their behalf and or look the other way when their aides, simply by virtue of association with their principal, defraud people.
It is in this wise, therefore, that Aisha Buhari, no matter how political opponents of her husband and mischievous people would view it, should be commended for she shouted to protect her integrity when and where many others would, in the process of remaining silent, make and acquire fortune.
Again, she should be praised for her call “on all those in positions of authority to rise above intimidation by their aides and deal with such attitudes as extortion by name-dropping.” As she has rightly pointed out, it should be kept at the back of minds of those in positions of authority in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration that this government was voted into office based on the trust and confidence the people had in the revered President.
