A Ministry for the Mistress!

By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi I'm surprised that it hasn't quite sunk in for Nigerians that Muhammadu Buhar...

By Farooq Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

I'm surprised that it hasn't quite sunk in for Nigerians that Muhammadu Buhari basically created an entire ministry--the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development-- which had never existed before, for his mistress, Sadiya Umar Farouq, who also brazenly stole and resold food donated to internally displaced people by the Saudi government during the month of Ramadan in 2017.

So even in the holy month of Ramadan when Islam enjoins us to be above board in morals, to care for the needy, to be our best, etc., a self-identified Muslim woman stole food donated to fellow Muslims who are needy and less fortunate than she is, and she's rewarded with a special ministerial appointment by a Muslim president who had affairs with her! Unbelievable!

Note that the ministry created for her has taken over the government agencies that Yemi Osinbajo used to supervise. Such a nice way to minister to a mistress! That's higher than a First Lady's position, in my opinion.

I've also heard from multiple credible sources that a current minister of state who was active in the CPC (Congress for Progressive Change) and also bedeviled by a questionable moral past was Buhari's mistress. Is there any parallel for this? I mean for a "president" to appoint his (former) thieving mistresses as ministers?

Was that what he meant when he said he'd only appoint people who were "personally" known to him? Of course, we know Abba Kyari sold the other ministerial slots to people who weren't "personally" known to Buhari.

Apart from appointing his blood relatives as close aides and illegally extending the service years of some of them (such as his nephew by the name of Abdulkarim Dauda who was due to retire this year), he has at least two former mistresses that we know of as ministers.

 Yet he embodies "integrity." The world's English dictionaries need to extend the semantic boundaries of this word to take account of how Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria has resemanticized it.