Adetayo explains that in each case the appointees would sign the oath register and the President would append his signature, shake hands with the appointees and pose for photographs with them. The snag was that only the men had the privilege of a Presidential handshake. The President only looked straight at the women and said “congratulations.” No handshake.
Adetayo, who is a State House correspondent, says that the President had shaken hands with women before. He remembers that when Buhari relocated to the Villa he shook hands with female journalists, held their hands for a few seconds while they introduced themselves to him. He did the same thing with the male journalists.
Adetayo says further: “I also sighted him shaking hands with the same public officials (including the women) after taking group photographs with them outside the council chambers after their inauguration.”
Will shaking hands with women hurt Buhari? No. Will shaking hands with women help him? Yes. That will be one important step on the highway to the hearts of our women and gender equality activists. Mr President, just do it.
So why does the President shake hands sometimes with women and refuses to do so at other times. Buhari is known to be a staunch Moslem who would feel obliged to obey Islamic injunctions. He is also the President of Nigeria and Nigeria is made up of men and women who must, all things considered, be treated equally as demanded by global human rights conventions to which Nigeria is a signatory. As a President in a democracy he must make a choice between Islamic etiquette and democratic etiquette. In a theocracy he has a right to discriminate against women. In a democracy he has no such right. And Nigeria is a democracy not a theocracy.
I have spoken to some Moslems on this issue of men shaking hands with Moslem women who are not their wives. They tell me that men can shake hands with Moslem women where there is no ulterior motive behind the handshake. I believe that Buhari knows this.
That is why he shakes hands with some women but why not with all women? In the etiquette of shaking hands, it will be bad manners for any citizen to offer his or her hand to the country’s President first. Of course, this happens on the rare occasions that Presidents meet large groups of enthusiastic citizens at campaign rallies or public functions.
People surge forward and thrust their hands to be shaken by the President because a presidential handshake is a rare gift, a life time opportunity to earn a few seconds of fame. It is intriguing that Buhari would deny some of his citizens this privilege when he knows that there is nothing to lose but everything to gain by that simple act of courtesy.
Some years ago, during the governorship tenure of Lucky Igbinedion of Edo State, there was a meeting of some governors in Benin. Lucky Igbinedion’s wife, Eki, was determined to play the role of a pleasant hostess. According to reports, she came round to shake hands with the governors and the governor of Zamfara State, Ahmed Sani Yerimah, refused to shake hands with her.
The lady stood there in front of him with her outstretched hand until the other governors persuaded him to show respect to his hostess. He shook hands with her eventually. I do not know whether or not he washed his hands with detergent after that episode.
I do admit that some Moslems, even in this modern era, adhere very strictly to this handshake injunction. They are entitled to it. A few years ago, I attended a function at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja. When I saw my colleague, a woman I admired for her professionalism and courage, Bilkisu Yusuf, I rushed to her and stretched my hand for a handshake.
She simply put her hands behind her back. In my ignorance, I thought that I would be fostering colleagueal friendliness by shaking her hand. I thought she was just being unfriendly until she explained to me that it was forbidden by her religion. Later that day when we were to go back to the town, she opted to give me a ride in her car. She drove while I sat next to her on the passenger’s seat. I simply joked that I was feeling even better sitting next to her in the car for all of 30 minutes or so instead of a fleeting one second handshake. We both laughed.
In governmental affairs, there are some things that are not written down but they are acceptable norms of behaviour which are aimed at oiling the wheels of democracy. One of them is a handshake.
The other is a hug. Each of them, when used, defines the quality or intimacy of the relationship, the level of friendliness or hostility between them. There have been occasions when North and South Korean leaders refused to shake hands with each other or Palestinian and Israeli leaders until they were prodded to do so. So a handshake or a hug is a barometer that indicates the temperature level of relationships.
These are two types of non-verbal communication which may or may not show the true nature of their feelings towards each other. For example, even during the heat of the cold war American and Soviet Union leaders never failed to shake hands with each other. To the discerning, these handshakes did not mask the fact that both sides were locked in a dangerous game called Balance of Terror.
For some Moslems who think a handshake with women is taboo, I draw their attention to the fact that Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton, both of them American Secretaries of State, shook hands very freely with several Moslem leaders including the Saudis who are the archetypal Moslem elite.
I attended a human rights conference in Cairo, Egypt, in 1996 and at that conference there were Egyptian Moslem girls. They wore smart miniskirts, no headscarf and they shook hands with us freely. As an explanation, they said that Islam, like most other religions, must be dynamic if it is not to lose its adherents particularly the young educated elite. That is already happening in most of our churches today.
The Pentecostal churches are teaching the traditional churches such as Anglican, Methodist, Qua Iboe and Catholic a thing or two about how to run churches in the modern era. They have introduced music and dancing and fellowships for singles who are wife or husband hunters. These old churches are beginning to shift into new gears in their practices.
In the Pentecostal churches, the members can wear anything from tattered jeans to micro miniskirts and can let their hair cover their faces or their eyes, Rihanna style. There is no compulsion about covering their hair but the church workers do, even the younger ones.
A hug is something special in normal relationships. In politics, it is something a little more special than “pumping the flesh” which Western politicians have turned into a fine art. But a hug can be misleading particularly to the non-initiate.
In 1977, I went to Indiana University, Bloomington, in the United States for a multi-nation work-study programme. We were students from 13 countries and the head of the journalism programme of the University, Prof. Arpan, organised a cocktail to welcome us to the university.
Every woman at the party was giving me a hug and a peck on both cheeks. I asked myself: Could it be that all these women are in love with me? It was later that I found out that a hug and a peck were merely customary items of friendliness. For a bush boy like me this was a culture shock.
Ahmed Sani Yerimah’s version of Sharia was a flop. President Olusegun Obasanjo named it “political Sharia”. Why was it a flop? He could not effect the iron cast separation between men and women that he wanted. He did not have separate buses and schools and hospitals and restaurants and supermarkets for men and women. He did not have enough female doctors to treat female patients or male doctors to treat male patients. A world in which men and women will be truly fully separated is a utopia. It doesn’t exist. It never will.
Buhari must find a meeting point between his beliefs and the demands of democracy in a modern era. His ministers must understand precisely where he stands on these. If his female minister travels abroad will she refuse to shake hands with foreign dignitaries? If she declines that will be a diplomatic faux pas. Buhari was pumping the flesh during the campaigns and no one held it against him. If the President travels with his wife overseas will she shake hands with foreign dignitaries? If she doesn’t that, too, will be a diplomatic faux pas even though she is not a government official.
The President must strike a blow for the full emancipation of Nigerian women. Nigeria will experience only stunted growth if its women continue to be kept in inferior status because of some practices that have been abandoned or bent in other climes to suit the demands of this era. The President needs to break down the barriers that hold us down, by offering a handshake across frontiers: Female/male frontiers, region/region, religion/religion frontiers and rich/poor frontiers. There is the saying that a handshake that goes beyond the elbow is an arrest.
But more importantly, a non-handshake is an arrest, an arrest of societal growth, an arrest of the craving for equality between the sexes.
During the presentation of the world cup to the German football team that won the world cup last year in Brazil, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, made it a point of duty to hug each of the German players and coaches. It was a movingly admirable scene by one of the greatest leaders of the Western world.
Will shaking hands with women hurt Buhari? No. Will shaking hands with women help him? Yes. That will be one important step on the highway to the hearts of our women and gender equality activists. Mr President, just do it.
