Zahra, one of the daughters of Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has suffered backlash online this week, after she called President Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia a ‘Fucking Child Fucker’.
President Jammeh reportedly declared that that homosexuals caught in the Gambia will have their throats slit. Ms. Buhari took to micro-blogging website, Twitter to respond to President Jammeh’s declaration. The screenshot below tells that story clearly.
Expectedly, condemnation began to flood in as Twitter users expressed shock over the comment by the daughter of a President.
Zahra is not new to controversy. During the 2015 election campaigns, she shot into limelight when Buhari’s Twitter handlers released glam photos of her online sparking debates over her beauty and sex appeal, and her ‘lavish lifestyle’ as a student in the United Kingdom.
Following the backlash, Zahra has attempted some damage control by saying she was actually calling gay people ‘child fuckers’ and ‘those who legalize homosexuality’.
Observers are bewildered as to how Zahra Buhari would consider homosexuality as being equal pedophilia. Homosexuality being same sex sexuality, while pedophilia is sexual attractions for children by adults. With Zahra’s exposure, being a student of one of the most expensive universities in the United Kingdom, it is unlikely that she would make this mistake.
Analysts have concluded that her about-face is an attempt to avoid a diplomatic row between The Gambia and Nigeria and the easiest target is gay people. West African countries are deeply homophobic societies.
West African countries are deeply homophobic societies. But according to Aisha, an observer who commented on the BREAKING TIMES report on Thursday, Zahra Buhari is right on Jammeh. “Jammeh is into witch-craft and marabouts and believes that as long as he sleeps with virgins, he will stay in power. Many girls have been abused by Jammeh, two have ran away from Gambia and are currently in neighbouring Senegal. He married 17 year old Alima Sillah, disvirgined her and then divorced her. Countless other innocent girls have been raped by President Jammeh but are scared to go public because Jammeh controls everything in Gambia”, Aisha said.
However, in the process of shifting her earlier position on Jammeh, she has inadvertently called President Obama, a ‘Child Fucker’. This poses a huge challenge for her father, President Buhari who is scheduled to meet with the US President Barack Obama this month. Reversing Nigeria’s anti-gay laws is top on the agenda of the meeting between the two presidents.
Ms. Buhari’s Twitter handle, which is linked to her personal website, www.zahrabuhari.com, follows 120 accounts and boasts a followership of over 400,000. It was actively involved in the Presidential campaigns which brought her father to office.
According to Abubakar Umar, “If she used such words in the first instance, that will be most regrettable. Such uncouth gutter language is least expected from any lady with any modicum of decency not to talk of the daughter of the president of Nigeria. It only exposes a most ill brought up, unrefined and grossly unprepared specimen of a girl thrown into a rarefied space of the daughter of the president and is only going to be another national embarrassment once she opens her mouth.”
