Exactly 120 days after terrorists bombed the AK-9 train conveying hundreds of passengers from Abuja to Kaduna; families of the surviving 41 persons still in captivity yesterday, slammed First Lady and Wife of President Muhammadu Buhari, Aisha Buhari, accusing her of abandoning her motherly role, unlike her predecessor, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, who rose to the occasion in similar circumstances a few years ago.
Family members of the victims as early as 8AM, Monday, besieged the Federal Ministry of Transportation headquarters, Abuja, preventing staff including top management officers from accessing their offices.
With mats spread at the entrance gate, they dared any staff of the Ministry to cross the barricade and for over four hours, they kept faith with their threat.
Interjecting while the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Transportation, Dr. Magdalene Ajani was addressing the protesters, a family member Hajia Hadiza Mohammed chided Mrs. Aisha Buhari for giving up her motherly responsibility of empathy, for politics at a time family members are grieving over the fate of their loved ones held captive by terrorists.
Recalling Mrs. Jonathan famous lamentation “Chai, there is God o,” when 276 school girls were kidnapped from Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno state in 2014 by members of Boko Haram Sect, Mrs. Mohammed noted that the then First Lady earned applause for her motherly care unlike her successor today.
She said: “When Patience Jonathan was the First Lady of this country, she came out and she cried and her statement has now become a slogan in this country. What is our First Lady doing? Is she not a mother? Is she not a grandmother? For once, she has never come out to say anything to anybody. She has not done anything. She is there canvassing for women to come out and contest (elections). Half of the population that came out to vote in this country were women. She (Aisha) is there sitting wherever she is. She will come back to meet us here. Soldiers come, soldiers come, and barracks remain. My belief is that what goes around comes around.”
Mrs. Mohammed further noted that her little relatives were captured in the recent video released by the gunmen on Sunday, where they were seen flogging their victims.
“Madam (addressing the Permanent Secretary), do you know that those four little kids in the video that were running after their mothers when they were flogging their fathers, are my nephews and nieces? Do you know the trauma they will face when they get out of that place? Beating their fathers in their presence and teaching them how to be violent (is terrible),” she lamented
