Alhassan and the game of long knives – Azu Ishiekwene

Azu Ishiekwene

Those who thought that Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting would be the political funeral for Minister of Women Affairs Aisha Alhassan may have exaggerated her dilemma after all.

She may well have had her letter of resignation in her bag, but in the end President Muhammadu Buhari didn’t push her over the edge – yet. After many years in politics, Alhassan should know that wrongs might not be counted always; but they’re not easily forgiven.

For example, three days after the video in which she endorsed former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for 2019 went viral, and while she was still trying to explain what she really meant, a small document was leaked from the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation.

According to the report, the Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development paid N11.7million for Alhassan and some officials of her ministry to visit unnamed skill acquisition centres.

The report, published by Premium Times, however, said, “Audit investigations established that the purported appraisal visits to the skill acquisition centres were never undertaken.”

The report did not say the minister pocketed the money given that it was curiously released on the day she was sworn in, but the money was raised in her name and spent after she assumed office. Was this a parable or its cousin?

It might well have been a coincidence that the audit report was leaked only days after the Alhassan video on Atiku went viral. But politicians, like witchdoctors, take omens very seriously. Why now? And what next?

Any trace of doubt that Alhassan may have talked herself into a tight corner disappeared when Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai and his Ogun State counterpart, Ibikunle Amosun, both strong loyalists of President Muhammadu Buhari, threw the minister under the bus.

Even if Buhari had told her he would not do a second term, was it her place to say it on the rooftop and preempt him so frontally by even announcing her own preferred candidate? Is this how to treat the man who rescued her from the crushing defeat of her gubernatorial misadventure and gave her a ministerial seat?

It was not her fault, El-Rufai said. Buhari was paying the price for ignoring an earlier warning that Alhassan was Atiku’s snake in the president’s grass.

Well, for sometime now, the Buhari grass has not been looking like a safe ground and Alhassan’s goof was just one metaphor for a cabinet in disarray.

Even in a matter as straightforward as negotiations with striking lecturers, the public had to wait while the office of the vice president and that of the minister of labour spent a few days quibbling over who will meet with the university teachers.

The strike is already in its fourth week and it is embarrassing that the government doesn’t know who is supposed to do what.

Also, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the Office of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice have been locked in a cold war that can only undermine the government’s anti-corruption war.

Justice Minister Abuba