By Dame Taiwo Ajai-Lycett
I’m one of those foolish enough to naively believe that more women in governance could make a difference, by thinking they could lend some measure of sanity to our lives, and help in tenderizing the polity with their supposed divine soft sensibilities and sensitivities.
Even assuming the political wives haven’t yet demonstrated enough cerebral presence, moral or social gumption to exert any meaningful influence over their husbands through ‘pillow talk’, one would imagine that, finally, when a woman gets into a position of power, she would be more concerned with the greater good, and delivering it… How delusional can one get, eh? But delusional or not, one thing, even in my consternation, I can’t deny women folk is their innate instinct for telling shit from shinola. Hence, it is safe to say these political wives knew exactly what they were signing up for: hitching a ride of comfort and easy life hence the magical ‘pillow talk’ I allude to, is bound to be a mere tete-a-tete between comrades at arms.
But when the hands that rock the cradle, plunder it, and can callously casually eat their own young, we are truly doomed, as in f….d! This perversion begins to look insanely like penis envy – a sort of – what the man can do, the woman can do better. A Plantation Mentality – where a field nigger, when elevated to house nigger, becomes even more despicable, more heartless than the white master. It is unconscionable, and such a crying shame that, a woman in power, rather than embracing her innate roles, and intrinsic responsibilities, chooses to dissociate herself from her true nature and realities. But then a friend of mine lamented my naive expectations of the political wives, causing me to question what pedigree of women are attracted to the pedigree of men that largely populate our current political class. “You know,” he said, “that the Awos and Ziks of this world were not Nigerians, if you must call these slew of shrews Nigerians.” After all are we not, at every turn, reminded by the present political class, that they are mostly made up of advance fee fraud jobbers, ex-cons, nitwits with two left hands, and semi-illiterates? Heavens help us. I feel sick. Where is the light at the end of this very dark tunnel, eh?
