TheCable

President Muhammadu Buhari says his wife, Aisha, belongs in his kitchen and “the other room”, apparently a euphemism for the bedroom.

Buhari said this at a press conference after a closed-door meeting,with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in response to an interview Aisha granted the BBC, where she said that his government had been hijacked.

In the interview, Aisha had also said that she might not support her husband under the present circumstances if he seeks re-election in 2019.

“I don’t know which party my wife belongs to, but my wife belongs to my kitchen and my living room and the other room.” Buhari said.

“It is not easy to do away with opposition or people who did not follow you along your campaign trail. I hope my wife will remember that I was on the field for 12 years; I tried three times, the fourth time I managed to succeed. And I ended up the first three times in the Nigerian Supreme Court, so I claim superior knowledge over her and the rest of the opposition and I succeeded.

“It is not easy to satisfy the whole Nigerian opposition party or to participate in the government.”

He also used the opportunity to talk about the “degradation” of Boko Haram insurgents, and talks with the leadership of Niger Delta militants, traditional rulers, and oil companies to put an end to frequent attacks on oil installationst.

“We are talking to them to cease fire because the government has the capacity to deal with them the way we dealt with Boko Haram. But is in the interest of Nigeria that we deal with this matter through discussion as a much more civil way of running the administration,” he siad.

On the Chibok girls, Buhari spoke on the release of 21 of them, adding that about 100 more were still in the hands of insurgents somewhere in the Lake Chad Basin area, which includes Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria.

“In getting this 21 out, we hope we will get enough intelligence to go about securing the rest of them,” he said.

“We are very grateful to the United Nations participation in trying to secure the release of these girls. Please don’t forget that the overall scene of the operation of the terrorist in Nigeria.

“At least 37,000 Nigerians were killed by Boko Haram, right now we have about 1.5 to two million people in Internally Displaced a Persons (IDPs) camps, 60 per cent of them are women and children and 60 per cent of those children are orphaned, they don’t even know their parents not to talk of where they come from.

“This is a major government problem which we have to face because we have to do the infrastructure, especially education and health, take them back to their villages and towns and reintegrate them so that they can have normal lives. In all these, we appreciate the participation of German government each time we ask of help.”