Atiku’s daughter under fire for disparaging Nigerians

A week-old message posted on Twitter by a daughter of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Rukaiya, triggered off a social media backlash on Monday.

Rukaiya had described those who criticised the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi 11, for marrying an 18-year old, named Sa’datu, as “commoners” in her recent tweet.

The post was a reaction to the uproar that greeted the marriage between the emir and Sa’datu, a daughter of the Lamido of Adamawa, Alhaji Muhammadu Musdafa.   

“Royals marrying royals and commoners actually think their opinion matters,” she tweeted.

She went further to suggest that the emir was but a “grand prince” until his marriage to the Lamido’s daughter.

“All I see, one time grand prince and now king married a one time a grand princess and princess. Now a queen. All hail (sic),” he tweeted.

Perhaps, Rukaiya’s tweets were not immediately noticed and she enjoyed a week of grace before she was lambasted. On Monday the Twitter posts, which many people described as disparaging, resurfaced, generating an outage across different online platforms.

Reacting to the tweets, which were circulated online, bloggers on nairaland.com said the former Vice President’s daughter’s outburst was an unnecessary and expensive joke.

A contributor identified as Supogirl wondered what informed Rukaiya’s conclusion when the only visible factor that distinguish rich Nigerians from others was privilege.

 

“Do those she referred to as royals have a different colour of blood? Do they live longer than commoners? Do they have supernatural abilities? Don’t they also decay and turn to dust after death? Do they have a separate place they will spend their life after death?” she asked.

Supogirl also described the controversial remark as the result of an unfair reward system created by the country’s political system.

According to Ndu Chuks, also a blogger, the remark raised a question about the inability of ordinary Nigerians to take an independent position on national issues involving the elite.

“What do you expect when the commoners fight themselves over issues that concern public figures? Why won’t Akitu’s daughter feel like every other person except her family members and father’s associates are commoners when people who should have gone to jail are the ones we celebrate? While she should not have tweeted that posts, the truth is that there is some truth to her remark,” Chuks said mockingly.

 

But one Ngene Ukwenu argued that Nigerians could not rightly put the tweets into a proper perspective, as there was no sufficient clue in the posts to establish who Rukaiya referred to as commoners.

Ukwenu noted, “We have no idea of the context the tweets were made. And she was right in a way. When the Prince of Wales wanted to get married, do you think the commoners in England had a say?”

Rukaiya joined thousands of Nigerians who subjected the emir’s marriage to an online scrutiny. The marriage was welcomed with #ChildNotBride. The hashtag started trended widely on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp following a divided opinion on the issue.

Users, however, were equally divided on the appropriateness of the hashtag, which was coined in 2013 to fight a bill aimed at legalising child marriage. Some argued that the coinage was abused in the case of Sanusi’s youngest wife.

They argued that she was no longer a minor and a platform created to protect child brides should not have been used for her.

Due to the divided opinions, counter hashtags, such as #GoAndMarry, #BrideNotChild and #CrushNotHusband, were created in defence of the emir. The hashtag was promoted by those who argued that Sa’datu took the right decision.

Atiku’s daughter was among social media users who used their platforms to defend the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.