Wife of the president and First Lady of Nigeria, Aisha Buhari, have opened up on the viral video of a woman speaking angrily in what is believed to be Aso Rock, the presidential villa.
The video surfaced over the weekend and was said to be the First Lady reacting angrily to a closed-door wedding ceremony between President Muhammadu Buhari and Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Umar Farouq. But the video seemed to be a household quarrel between her and fellow residents of the Aso Villa — the daughters of the president’s relation and childhood friend, Mamman Daura.
In an in house interview granted to BBC Hausa, Aisha Buhari confirmed her presence in the video and shed more light on what transpired and as well as who recorded the video. she said:
“I was the one in that video and this person you see standing at my back are my security personnel. It was Fatima, the daughter of Mamman Daura that shot the video in front of my security and everybody there. She was actually recording the whole thing right in front of me and was laughing and mocking me.
They did that because my husband sacked them from the house. He told them to get all their belongings and leave the house for my son (Yusuf) to occupy.
I left them and wanted to get to one of the rooms but they prevented me from getting through, I left them and took another way yet I met the store locked.”
Fatima, in another interview with BBC Hausa, confirmed she indeed recorded the video, adding that the wife of the president almost assaulted her and her sister. She said:
“My name is Fatima. I am a daughter to Malam Mamman Daura… if one reason well, he or she will understand that it is not possible to say that the wife of the president is denied access to her apartment but let me give a context.
The apartment in question is called the Glass House. You know that there are several houses and apartments in the villa. When the president got into office, he gave the Glass House to our father, Mamman Daura.
You all know that they are friends and are related, more so, they grew up together like twins. When he became president, he gave the Glasshouse to our dad and said he should stay there. Our dad stayed there for three years now until when the president’s son, Yusuf, had an accident and went to Germany for treatment.
When he returned, the president told our dad to move out of that apartment to an even bigger one in the villa, that Yusuf is going to stay and be treated in the Glass House. The Glass House is closer to the main presidential apartment and that will make easier access to him by his mother. It is not in her apartment which is in the main apartment.”
Fatima narrated what led to the incident that was captured in the video, saying she recorded it to use as evidence against the first lady.
“(On that day) My mom and dad were not around. So, my dad instructed me and my elder sister, both of us are working and we go to work every morning, that we should come on a Saturday and move our belongings to the new apartment the president instructed,” she said.
We planned to park out then and have even concluded moving all the things. All of a sudden, in the afternoon, as we were busy on that errand of packing our belongings, we heard noise from outside. I was in an inner room in the house while my sister was in an outer one close to the main gate of the apartment. So my sister went out before I could come out.
On getting there, it was the wife of the president. When she came, the door was locked and she picked a metal chair and broke the door. I have sent the picture to you. My sister that went out was almost hit by the chair. She threw the chair which broke through the door and almost hit my sister.
I was so shocked and afraid of getting there because she was shouting and reigning abuses words and saying we should move out of that apartment. That she has never seen this kind of thing before. I then went back and picked my phone because if one is to say that she acted that way, no one would believe it without proof. She has already been saying a lot of things depicting that she is being suppressed.
So I recorded it to show our parents and the security so that they will know the truth should anything happen. Because of the way she was raging and shouting, I was thinking that she would pick something and hit us with it or something like that. That was why we recorded it. Had it been we wanted to release the video, we would have done it earlier. But you know if a video clip enters one or two hands, you can’t control where it will get to.
There are even other clips that have not been released, I will send them to you to see how she was insulting the security and how she drove them away saying who are they protecting and calling them bloody idiots. Its all on the video clip. That was what happened.”
The video gave rise to a nationwide rumor that the president was taking another wife in a closed-door ceremony. A rumor that Femi Adesina, Special Advisory on Media and Publicity to the president, strongly denied.
