Dame Pauline Tallen
There was no knowing that writing a story on Dame Pauline Tallen is equal to touching fire. Not only is every grammatical error corrected, factual errors are also protested. Look at this one below which has warranted the third correction of the correction within three hours:
[09/05, 08:49] …Morning. You are committing more gaffes/errors on this Pauline Tallen story. She’s a 1982 Sociology graduate of Unijos. She didn’t go to ABU. We were in the same department and she graduated a year ahead of me. I must have mentioned this to you at least once….
You want to know this protester? Anyway, his correction adds a radical dimension to the Tallen story because the Department of Sociology at the University of Jos at the time in question was a very radical but balanced Department.
Beyond his protest are others such as these below, (the numbers have been distorted):
[09/05, 09:24] +234 8….49: It is not opening at my end please.
[09/05, 08:31] : Mommy is not opening pls. Just give us a brief of the story ma
[09/05, 08:32] +234…61: Tried opening it but it’s not opening
With these, it seems the task comes to forming grand coalitions to block unworthy candidates and then escort the Pauline Tallens in our midst to political office in electoral terms, come 2023.
She superintends a trickle-down regime to those who needs it most
Below is the original story that was published:
Dame Pauline Tallen is Nigeria’s current Minister for Women Affairs. That must be one of the toughest jobs around since women affairs is almost automatically about children, the men who are the husbands/partners of the women and the family. This makes that ministerial position a complex one as the intersections make women too crucial for the functioning of capitalism, the reality capitalists do not want to acknowledge because of the reward implications.
But that is not Tallen’s campaign right now. Right now, she is stepping out early to be elected next February to the Nigerian Senate where the theoretical equality of Nigerian principalities called states is operationalised. Would she be a great Senator?
With other gender warriors at a previous function
That question brings back to Intervention‘s memory a casual statement by another gender activist not long ago. The activist said that Dame Tallen would easily win the position of the minister who worked hardest in the Buhari regime if such a competition existed. It was an opinion but a contextually relevant one. That is in two terms. The first is that she has a method of reaching out to the real people and her method is a sortie of honest women who will not turn mercenaries with items by which government is made real to those who are excluded at the class/gender level. The second is that she delivers. The lady stands to be corrected.
Someone else has said that even if she is not the best performing minister, this is the second time she is holding the position of a Minister. Under the Obasanjo regime, she was, at some point, Minister of State for the Ministry of Science and Technology. Then she was Deputy-Governor of her home state of Plateau in central Nigeria. And she is a graduate of Political Science from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria when that university was the place to go. Her level and quality of education is said to matter because of the emerging belief that the crisis of state in Nigeria also has to do with the crisis of formal education of too many high state officials in Nigeria today.
The implication is that a vote for Tallen is a vote for experience, exposure and performance, so goes the argument. Intervention has no contrary information to disagree. In any case, it is about time someone who has been a Minister for Women Affairs speaks for a state such as Plateau which has seen suffering of women, children and men too for such a long time.
