- OLABODE OPESEITAN
She is a real toughie. She is the wife of the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. She is Nigeria’s First Lady-in-waiting. She has also sharpened her own political teeth as First Lady at Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos, and as a three-term Senator of the Federal Republic.
She has leveraged her husband’s sphere of influence and her own cultivated relationships to carve her niche. She is also a Pastor of the THE REDEEMED CHRISTIAN CHURCH OF GOD.
Senator Oluremi Tinubu does not suffer fools gladly. She is an open book. What you see is what you get. She can be unequivocally blunt but as First Lady, some of the bluntness may be whittled by the intricate web of diplomatese.
She drives her aides and staff hard to get her desired results. A slave driver? Perhaps not. She is focused, detail-oriented and hardly takes no for an answer. To her and folks who share her school of thought, impossibility is just a mirage when there is a relentless pursuit of excellence.
In her, Nigerians will find a First Lady who is both a humanitarian and an education rights advocate, particularly the girl-child. She will be Eleanor Roosevelt, who is globally acclaimed for her Humanitarian efforts when she served as the United States of America First Lady, and Michelle Obama, who as America’s First Lady championed the cause of increasing education for girls under her Let Girls Learn advocacy, rolled into one.
She has a charitable heart, always looking out for the poor and helping them to pay their children’s school fees and solve one problem or the other. You will rarely see her taking credits for her charitable works but the numerous kids whose school fees she paid or the tenants she helped to pay their house rents and other masses she has helped to pull through when they were pummelled by the vicissitudes of life all remembered how she came through for them.
That is the kind of First Lady Oluremi Tinubu will be. She will make her mistakes; she is human, but she will work tirelessly for the greatest good for the greatest number of Nigeria.