Birthday Brouhaha: Kennedy- Ohanenye’s Ministry of Missteps
In the vaudevillian stage of Nigerian politics, where every actor plays for high stakes, one would expect the Minister of Women Affairs, Barr. Uju KennedyOhanenye, to wield her quill for the weighty affairs of state. Instead, she has penned a comedy of errors, allegedly using official letterhead to beckon all Honourable Ministers to her husband’s birthday shindig at the opulent Transcorp Hilton Hotel. It’s like watching Cleopatra hosting a feast in the court of Caesar, only, in this case, Cleopatra is the minister, and the feast is merely a birthday bash.
Picture it: the grand seal of the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, meant for the solemn business of governance, now moonlighting as a party planner for the “Double Chief” Kennedy Ohanenye’s soiree. It’s as if the ministry has transformed into a stage for high society farce, where the lines between personal festivity and public duty are blurred more than the vision of revellers after a raucous night out.
This latest frolic is but a scene in the larger theatre of blunders that is the Tinubu administration’s ministerial misadventures. It seems the female ministers are competing for the leading role in the tragicomedy of errors. From Betta Edu’s financial fiasco to Hannatu Musawa’s NYSC narrative, each act overshadows the last with its audacity. They are like a band of Shakespeare’s mechanicals, inadvertently providing a play within a play, except here, the stakes are the integrity of governance.
Kennedy-Ohanenye’s gaffe is the pièce de résistance in this festival of faux pas. It’s as if she’s decided if governance is a circus, then let there be a carnival! Why should the ministerial letterhead not double as an invitation to merriment? In her reimagining of officialdom, statecraft is indistinguishable from the art of party-throwing, and the corridors of power are but pathways to personal celebration.
It’s a move so brazen that it has the chattering classes chattering even more, the gossip mills grinding out an extra shift. As the ink dries on this latest invitation, one can’t help but marvel at the audacity. The once-hallowed halls of government now echo with the sounds of birthday serenades. As the Tinubu government sails on through choppy waters, it appears Kennedy-Ohanenye has unwittingly become the captain of the revelry, steering the ship not with a compass of competence, but with the gaiety of a party hat.