WHY WE NEED OUR FIRST LADY'S TEARS

If ever I had any doubts that Goodluck Jonathan has been avoiding me, those doubts were cleared this week. I was watching the news when John Kerry, speaking on behalf of the American government, said he had placed a call to Goodluck to offer his support and that Goodluck went on his knees in gratitude. My sources further informed me he called the President on the same MTN line that I have been trying unsuccessfully to reach him on. Immediately I heard this, I scrolled through my phone contact list to see if I still had the number and when I dialled it, I got the same response I had been getting since I declared my candidacy for 2015- nothing, but a caller tune. So an American will call him and he will pick, but a fellow presidential candidate will give him advice and he will ignore. I want to remind Jonathan that there is God. I also think a president shouldn’t be using noisy caller tunes.

So I have been going out to protest every day in Abuja on the #bringbackourgirls campaign. As a presidential hopeful it is important to lend my voice to the global cry to release the abducted girls of Chibok. I am also getting street credibility by being on the march every day. I have long complained about being marginalised by security forces when they arrest activists. Sadly, this protest is not the type one gets arrested for. As if that is not bad enough, on Wednesday I was sitting at the protest when Dino Melaye drove in with a car whose likeness I had never seen before. As I write I am still trying to use google to find out what type of car it was. You will recall that I had earlier written about how God had blessed Dino’s activist hustle in spite of all the wife battering and luxury fleet of cars (Dino01- Dino10) scandals. Tuface said, “who God have blessed no man can curse”. I say “which activist hustle has been blessed, no columnist can curse”. You remember how God smiled on Dino by sending an overzealous policeman to arrest and detain him during a protest against our ‘armoured-car’ aviation minister. And even though the arrest turned to be about some other issue, the news reported what the news reported: Police Storm Activist Dino Melaye’s House For Protesting Against Aviation Minister. I don’t have a problem with Dino attending the same protest as me. Hustle and let hustle is all I am saying. Because the chances of me getting arrested and boosting my activist credentials are greatly reduced if there is a flashy Dino granting interviews about a campaign he just joined. Hustle and let hustle.

I watched the First Lady harass people from Chibok at a meeting in a video that has since gone viral. This has made me amend a lot of my proposed policies. As president I will insist that INEC conduct a separate election for spouses of gubernatorial and presidential candidates. Because if a first lady is going to be able to set up a committee to investigate abductions and order people to appear before her or worse get arrested, then we should have a say in bringing her to power. I am still working out the technical details, like what if we elect a man but his wife loses? Would we be able to do a wife swap in the event that the wife of a different candidate wins the first lady election? In that case we might need a law declaring that intercourse resulting from a marital merger during elections is not to be considered adultery.

At this point however, I want to reiterate one of the points in my original manifesto. I have declared that if elected I will not marry. This makes me clearly superior to the other candidates who have wives waiting to become parallel dictators. I promise to defy every ‘settling-down’ bone in my body and keep my relationships simple; an unofficial partner at best, who will visit on the weekends. And like I said, no, my partner will not sleep over at the villa. Because that is how one gets roped into marriage, to the detriment of a whole nation. Imagine the headlines: “PRESIDENT IMPREGNATES GIRLFRIEND. PRESSURED BY FAMILY TO MARRY.” God forbid that such a thing should happen. God forbid that a first lady should truncate my presidential hustle.

But so that I do not sound ungrateful, let me thank Her Excellency, Mama Peace, for contributing precious presidential tears to the #bringbackourgirls campaign. Imagine, the first lady of the United States just posed with a cardboard sheet and every one was retweeting her photo. Our first lady cried. Broke down and cried into a white handkerchief. Let us pause and consider the significance of this. Crying is the ultimate symbol of mourning, but crying, tears or no tears, into a white handkerchief says: I mourn, but as a believer I have hope, I see the light, I see better times ahead. I don’t know how people missed this. I guess it is easier to hit retweet on a photo of Michelle Obama holding a cardboard sheet than to analyze the immense significance and symbolism of Patience Jonathan crying into a white handkerchief. Me, I choose to be patriotic and do the latter. And no, I refuse to discuss whether or not there was menthol on the handkerchief. Because I care.

Ps. I am a believer in the saying that size doesn't matter. Size shouldn't matter. I was thinking about this when an Abuja biker, in all his fancy apparel decided to make the loudest sound as he passed by us doing a sit-out protest by the roadside.  Instead of anger at interrupting our meeting, I felt an inadvertent sympathy for him and his apparent need to compensate for some other thing missing in his life. I haven't figured out what he was missing. But I still believe this and that people need to be reassured that size doesn't matter.