By Nwaorgu Faustinus
“Our people do not give birth to uncountable children. Our men don’t give birth to children they dump in the streets. We are not like people from that part of the country”. – Mrs. Patience Jonathan.
The attention of the All Progressives Congress [APC], Rivers State Chapter has been drawn to the unguarded and extremely shameful vituperations of the Nigerian First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan while on zonal campaign rallies for her husband across Nigeria recently.
Ordinarily, the APC would have remained amused at the futile comic relief her court-jestering was providing the serious political space and environment. But that cannot be the case when she has, in the past two weeks, descended into the abyss of opprobrious indecency with her words and body language.
At first, the First Lady went below the belt to describe the Presidential Candidate of the All Progressives Congress [APC], General Muhammadu Buhari [Rtd] as ‘brain dead.’ As if not done, she went ahead and lambasted the retired General in unprintable words, likening him to the grandfather of the President.
But as a nation already tired of her challenges with our second language watched on, the First Lady upped her game by foraging into areas where even angels fear to tread. By going beyond insulting General Buhari to taunting the section Buhari hails from as procreating uncontrollably, the APC wants to believe someone should caution Mrs. Patience Jonathan to be aware of the ensuing whirlwind that will result from the wind she is planting.
The APC would like to inform Mrs. Jonathan that the Ivory Coast’s former first lady, Simone Gbagbo, has just been sentenced to 20 years in jail for her role in the violence that followed the 2010 elections in that country. This should be instructive to our First Lady that her utterances have far-reaching consequences, good or bad. And how she ends up in history remains her responsibility, meaning that she should hold herself responsible for whatever her verbal incontinence and indiscretion brings to her, now or in the future.
It is important to remind our dear First Lady that wars and conflicts have, sometimes, been caused by wrong people finding themselves in the right places as we seem to have now. But when the bell tolls, everyone will answer according his or her deeds but not before the damage is already done and lives lost.
However, it is the hope of the APC that Mr. President will do what any good husband does: call the wife to order. This will avert the fast growing anger building up in our brothers and sisters from the North who perceive her recent demeaning utterances as a collective insult. A stitch in time, they say, saves nine!
