Jennifer Atiku returns

Jennifer Jamilah Atiku, wife of the former vice president and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is said to be working in the background for the actualisation of her husband’s presidential ambition next year.

The Anambra State-born former journalist, who has been out of circulation since the exit of her husband from office, might be gearing up already for a future in political limelight.

Fondly called Jamilah by her husband, she was reported to have aided Atiku’s dream of starting an American-styled university in the early 2000s, when she was a doctoral student at the American University in Washington DC. After a long hibernation occasioned by her husband’s apparent diminished influence in the power equation of the country, she is set to take over her place in the social circuit again.

Recently, she drew family, friends and associates to Dubai for the wedding of her son, Chuka and was seen glowing, observed mingling with all and sundry, as she has not toned down her level of socialising.

Jamilah enjoys the love and confidence of her husband, little wonder one of the administrative buildings in the American University of Nigeria (AUN) owned by the former vice president was named after her.

Formerly known as Jennifer Iwenjiora in her days at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), she metamorphosed from being a simple television reporter to one of the wives of a former vice president. Highly cerebral, Jennifer embraced Islam and changed her name to Jamilah after her marriage to Atiku, a union that came as a shock to some, being an Igbo woman. But to another set of people, her choice was a fulfillment of who she is: bold, intelligent, fierce and a go-getter.