Written by Tunde Fagbenle
Sunday, 09 August 2009
Turai, full name Hajiya Turai Yar’adua, aka First Lady, is our president’s wife. A pretty and personable woman, if you ask me, whose demure look belies the fiery strong character underneath. She is also the mother of a number of daughters who have come to be known more by the ‘co-incidence’ of their marriages, each to some state governor or another, than by any individual achievement or intellect.

Before the ascension of her husband to Aso Rock, little was known of Turai – well, if truth be told, little also of her husband beyond being the innocuous governor of some near nondescript state that lives off the national cake. Even her name too, sweet as it sounds, wasn’t one of the more familiar ones around. Not a Maryam, for instance!

But Hajiya Turai, since getting to Aso Rock has gone about busily asserting her presence in the scheme of decision making within the presidency, leaving her less- than-active husband to his sleep, oft to his chagrin, but with a complementarity that assuages any reservation.

Words have been going round about how without getting Turai’s blessing you aspire to a juicy government appointment but in vain. Worse, any contract worth its salt, i.e. in the several billions of naira, comes only to those Turai appoints, and, how oft, many a well-oiled contract deal has been thwarted at the very last minute by a Turai’s sniffing intervention.

I can’t hold any of these charges against Hajiya Turai, hear say, they are, even in a Nigeria where they say: “there’s no smoke without fire”.

But in her most recent public and media outing, the First Lady has given me the greatest angst. Apparently – drawing from a chain of precedence of predecessor-First Ladies, from Mariam Babangida to Maryam Abacha right up to the late Stella Obasanjo – Madam Turai, as soon as she had settled into Aso Rock, had quickly formed her own “Foundation” which has now chosen to establish an International Cancer Centre in Abuja.

Had cancer not been such a sore point for me lately – since the sad loss of my great friend, Yinka Craig, to the dreaded disease – I would have pulled no punches in lashing out at this most obnoxious of campaigns ever held in our public space since the Obasanjo Presidential Library shenanigan about three years ago.

Madam Yar’Adua dreams of creating a Cancer Centre of international standard, hence the word “international” to the name of the proposed, er, clinic, where those who suffer from the dreaded disease can go for diagnosis and treatment. Again, I have a soft spot for any effort at dealing as deadly a blow to the terrible ailment as it dealt to my late friend, and so I’m glad Hajiya Turai shares my pain and thinks of “doing something”. Great; kind heart, great thoughts.

What is, however, disturbing is how Turai has gone about wanting to get her “dream” materialize.

At a well-publicized Fund-raising event held at the appropriately chosen International Conference Centre, Abuja, Hajia Turai got the “Crème de la Crème” of Nigeria political and business class to raise a mind-boggling N10bn for Turai’s project.

The thought of what transpired on that occasion is enough to make any right-thinking Nigerian puke. But we are in a country too far gone in absurdities and official criminalities to bat an eyelid.

N10bn donated on the spot, for a private project, of a public officer’s wife, by well-known private and public figures in private and official capacities, for a cause that is not already established, no track record, nothing; nothing, but that it’s the President’s wife’s event?

But I blame not Turai, after all, even a sitting President, that man for whom shame had no meaning, Obasanjo, had equally thrown such event and raised his own billions and nothing happened! After all, the Maryams before him also had gotten their own “pet projects” well fund-raised! Ours is a sick society indeed. And, incidentally, an eager, see-I’m-still-relevant, Obasanjo was there to chair and cheer; and to show them “how we do it”! Events such as this have themselves become the cancer of our society!

Let us visit cursorily some of the donors at Turai’s event: Alhaji Aminu Dantata donated N1.2bn on behalf of himself, friends and associates; his nephew, Aliko Dangote gave N1bn for starters, he says; Niger State governor, Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, gave a measly N720m on behalf of some nameless “governor’s forum”. Then all sorts of characters, including that infamous Daniel Kanu of Abacha time took the opportunity to show face and “identify with a noble cause”, throwing in their own ostentatious millions for Turai to see. Even the National Assembly members weren’t left out of the struggle for Turai’s eye. And, of course, this is not counting the many others who would, for whatever fear, rather make their own donation privately and directly to the First Lady – later, and possibly more effectively.

The questions to ask: what sort of work, what sort of business, how have these people made such money as to be able to give billions of naira just like that? Where is the taxman? How much tax, personal and corporate, have these people been paying? What has happened to all the other “Foundations” and “Centers” for which “First Ladies” and “First Man” (in the case of Obasanjo) raised their own billions?

What government contracts have these “kind-hearted” donors received and will receive to compensate for their generosity? For, let no one be deceived, any and all of those donors will get the amount they contributed back in many folds – insha Allah and for as long as Turai and Umaru are in Aso Rock. Those others who may have EFCC on their trail may also be assured of some gentler handling. That is the crazy country we live in. Any surprise America’s President Barack Obama gave us a wide-berth on his maiden official visit to Africa, choosing to throw sharp barbs at us from Ghana?

Let me end where I started, I am happy at Hajiya Turai’s concern about the havoc cancer is wrecking on our society. But is this multi-billion centre really the best way to get involved? Who administers the centre? Who monitors transparency and accountability of use of the funds? Where is the guarantee of continuity beyond the Yar’Adua’s Aso Rock years? Of course, projects such as this make the need for a 2nd term more imperative – and what a curse on Nigeria that would be! Couldn’t the billions go into funding badly needed equipment and staff for a special Cancer Ward at one of the existing Teaching Hospitals?

The questions are just too many and too troubling. This cancerous business is funny and tastes really nasty. Pssshhh!