Lately, since returning from my 2016 summer vacation in the United Kingdom, I have cultivated the rich culture of reading different books about how some distant powerful nations evolved from their near -nothingness to their current global rating, as world leaders in both economy and international politics. In this light, I procured two books with specific thematic focus on China, unarguably, the fastest growing economy in the world.

One of the two books is entitled Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century, written by two Western theorists, namely, Professors Orville Schell and John Delury. The second is a broadly respected political book aptly titled The Politics book, which was generally edited by Mr Sam Atkinson.

From Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century, the authors clearly established the fact that China’s phenomenal rise in international politics and economic growth was in part due to practical lessons and developments that the founding fathers imbibed from some westerners who had sojourned in different parts of China.

Chinese technology is said to have been borrowed extensively from the West, since no man is an island unto himself. For instance, one of the earliest chapters of this book is on ‘Western Methods, Chinese Core’ in which the authors recollected a historical event that happened when Empress Dowager Cixi, the last paramount ruler of China’s last empire, whose de-facto reign spanned five decades, interacted extensively with sojourners from the West.

They stated that Empress Cixi was the first Qing ruler to open up the forbidden city – the vast imperial compound at the centre of Beijing – to westerners. Yours faithfully, had in 2005, visited this forbidden city.

From the second book, The Politics Book, comes the revealing episodes of how, during China’s warring states period, between the 5^th and 3^rd centuries BCE, rulers were vying for power over a unified Chinese Empire, and a new political philosophy emerged to suit these turbulent times. It is also a notorious fact that it was only a few years back that Hong Kong, a territory now under mainland China, was reverted back to mainland China from the British who had administered it.

In the United States of America, campaign for who would succeed the first ever African-American President Barack Obama, by year-end, has entered frenetic dimensions, with only a few days to the election proper.

The Republican candidate, Mr Donald Trump, the debonair business mogul – who is squaring up against the Democratic Mrs Hilary Clinton, former Secretary of State and a Senator who represented New York – is specifically called an outsider. Trump, who is said not to be a Washington insider, has had to bring in some strange but strategic political tacticians to try to see if he could carry the day and become the first newcomer into the political environment to have emerged President of the most powerful nation in the world.

The above stories on significant world powers are deliberately narrated here to serve as prelude to our analysis of the recent remarks by the wife of the Nigerian President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, who had told the Hausa service of a foreign broadcasting outfit that her husband, President Muhammadu Buhari ‘is surrounded by strangers.’ According to the newspaper reporters who wrote the story for their respective mainstream print media, wife of the President poured out her feelings regarding the ongoing political infighting within the political platform that brought her spouse into office last year, March 2015, which is the All Progressives Congress (APC). Two key players of the party are known to have suddenly become sworn enemies, because of disagreement over the primary election that produced the governorship candidate of the All Progressive Congress for the November 2016 Ondo governorship poll – Chief Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN).

The major fund-raiser of APC, who was reportedly instrumental to the slim victory scored by the current ruling national party over the then incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan, the Peoples Democratic Party – Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, actually wanted another candidate of his choice to emerge. But the National Chairman of APC, John Odigie-Oyegun and other Abuja political warlords who were hitherto Tinubu’s political sons, teamed up to frustrate his game plan. Right now, the APC exists like a keg of gun powder ready to explode any moment.

There exists lots of bottled up angst that Buhari’s kitchen cabinet led by his paternal uncle, Alhaji Mama Daura, has largely hijacked President Muhammadu Buhari, even as it is being rumoured that this clique hitherto known as the Daura Mafia are the very persons dictating the policy directive of this government, and are the very people bringing in their lackeys to head strategic positions in government.

The wife of President Buhari did not mince words in pouring out the hidden mindset of lots of the original political supporters of her husband who, right now, are feeling abandoned in terms of strategic political positioning and realignments. Yours faithfully has had series of interactions with some of these founding members of APC who had repeated this same narrative that Mrs Buhari had just delivered through the media.

The APC is no doubt in turmoil; and this, precisely, is what President Buhari’s beloved wife spoke about just as she expressed her fear about what she philosophically termed the impending revolution of 15 million voters, in which she alluded to the number of Nigerians who voted her husband into office last year. Aisha Buhari, blamed the crisis rocking the ruling APC on ‘strangers’ around her husband.

In an interview she reportedly granted the Hausa Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Aisha said the President is surrounded by people reaping where they did not sow. Many members of the party believe their contribution towards the President’s victory in the last general elections has not been rewarded, Aisha reportedly told the BBC in an interview that was aired. “This worries us a lot now,” she said, adding:

“Because they believe they are the ones who suffered, but are nowhere today. Those who didn’t do anything; who don’t even have voter’s card, are the ones in position, doing everything.”

The wife of the president was also quoted as saying: “What I am afraid for them is the rebellion of 15 million people,” perhaps alluding to the number of people who voted the President into power last year.

Aisha Buhari’s spokesman, Mr Zakari Yau Nadabo, in a telephone chat with a reporter, confirmed that his principal spoke to the BBC on the matter.

His words: “Yes! I can confirm that my principal granted the interview. Although I was not there when she spoke, I listened to a portion of the interview and the voice I heard is that of my principal. I am waiting for the whole interview to be aired so that the story can be taken in full context. So, as it is now, I cannot make comments about it.”

Nadabo said many had called him about the interview.

But are her fears grounded in empirical political data? I think her position is a catch 50:50 situation, which has both realistic and unrealistic projections.

Realistically, politics everywhere is usually a melting pot of strangers. As we read from those two books I briefly reviewed above, the best way to build the needed momentum to gain respectability and widespread acceptance is by inviting good and brilliant brains wherever they can be found. But the shortcoming is that the appointing authority is at the risk of bringing in green snakes in green grass, who may actually ruin the legacy that the head of government is building for himself.

There is no doubt that President Buhari, who is ‘officially in his early 70’s, is in the process of building a befitting political legacies, so that even when the passage of time comes, he would be remembered for those sterling qualities he is said to have built. But if the ministers and appointees are such evil ‘strangers’, then the intended legacies would be stained and tainted. Perhaps, that is the foundation of Mrs Aisha Buhari’s apprehension.

Han Fei Tzu (280-233 BCE) rightly states: “If evil ministers enjoy safety and profit, this is the beginning of downfall.”

This same man, like Nostradamus the great prophet, may have also given his wise counsel on what President Buhari could do, to check the dangers in working with evil strangers as cabinet level ministers or members of the so-called Kitchen Cabinet, given that his wife who has been with him for 25 years confessed that out of every 50 persons working for her husband, she knows only but five or so, and that that’s the same situation with her spouse.

Han Fei Tzu stated emphatically thus: “To govern the state by law is to praise the right and blame the wrong.”

In other words, President Muhammadu Buhari must, at all times, lead by his Constitutional Oath of office which could be summed up thus: “I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria; that as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I will discharge my duties to the best of my ability, faithfully and in accordance with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the law, and always in the interest of the sovereignty, integrity, solidarity, well-being and prosperity of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; that I will strive to preserve the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy contained in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; that I will not allow my personal interest to influence my official conduct or my official decisions; that I will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

The challenge herein is that it is clearly stated that Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was, since retiring from the Army and even when he showed disposition to canvass for elective position on more than three occasions before finally netting it in March 2015, through a strong coalition, his new political family has been made up of strange bedfellows. Buhari is known as an introvert, sort of, who barely moved around the length of Nigeria to build up political friends. So his political godfather, Alhaji Mamman Daura, has played on this loophole to take commanding lead in dictating the pace of governance under President Buhari. This hypothesis of strangers working for Buhari should worry not just Mr President himself, since although success in politics is arrived at by building new alignments with basically strange bedfellows, but these strange bedfellows over a period of time ought to have bought into the ideological guideline of the appointing authority, because two captains cannot pilot a ship successfully. Coming from the wife as it were, who should be the closest member of the President’s family, this portends present and realistic danger which must be nipped in the bud by Mr President.

As my people usually say, 'it is better to search for a black goat before the dawn of the night,' let President Buhari engage in soul-searching and purge his government of those evil ministers and team members, who are actually moles in government to serve the interest of their godfather.

•RIGHTSVIEW appears on Wednesdays, in addition to special appearances. The Columnist, a popular activist, is a former Federal Commissioner of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and presently National Coordinator of Human Rights Writers’ Association of Nigeria (HURIWA). He can be reached via 08033327672 (sms only) or via doziebiko@yahoo.com

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