If Aisha Buhari was banking on the saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder, she may need to hear another which goes, out of sight is out of mind.
The First Lady has not only been conspicuously silent from national discourse for a long time, she has also been far from her husband’s side in recent times.
As her days of disappearance lengthened, the number of theories that sought to explain her new-found public reticence grew more plentiful and absurd.
Aisha used to be visible on the social radar up until last June when she went on a holy pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Since then, she faded from the scene. While many folks showed genuine concern, others used the development as material for jokes about being stuck in the other room.
Some claimed that the woman who routinely makes splashes by speaking out against areas of her husband’s rule she disagrees with has finally been silenced.
This camp averred that the president finally had enough of her public insubordination and wielded his manly rights as the head of the home to land a fiat of silence on her head.
Another camp, seen most commonly on social media, argued that Aisha herself must have caught a sudden change of heart and truncated her one-woman crusade against bad governance before it ever really got going. While both camps argued back and fought on the matter, neither Aisha nor her retinue of advisers and hangers-on seemed interested in shedding light on what she has been up to. But now reports have surfaced (whisper it silently) of intense moves by her kinsmen and those who have her husband’s ears, to marry a new wife for the President since she left the Villa.
If she values her man and her position as First Lady, it would be wise for her to become visible and stay by the President before a new occupant takes over the ‘other room’. This may have prompted her recent tweet on the occasion of Nigeria’s Independence Day celebrations, her first since August. (Thisday)