Former Plateau State deputy governor, Pauline Tallen, has been nominated for a ministerial position three years after rejecting an ambassadorial appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari.
President Buhari had nominated the 60-year-old, alongside 45 others, as ambassadors in 2016 but she rejected it for the sake of fairness to other parts of her home state.
“I hail from the same local government and tribe with Governor Simon Lalong. I turned down the nomination because of balancing of appointments. I don’t think it is right for me to accept the appointment,” she said.
She also cited her husband’s poor health as reason for the rejection.
“My husband’s ill health is another reason why I will not accept the appointment,” she added in a statement.
In spite of her rejection, Mrs Tallen, who joined the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015, remained a dependable ally of First Lady Aisha Buhari.
When her husband, John Tallen, passed on in March 2017 at the age of 83, Mrs Buhari was the highest-ranking public figure to pay the family a visit.
Wives of service chiefs and wife of then Nasarawa State governor, Mairo Al-Makura, as well as her senior special assistant, Hajo Sani, accompanied the president’s wife on the visit.
A picture of the first lady hanging on the wall in Tallen’s living room underlines the special bond between the two women.
Speaking in a recent interview with thenationonlineng.net, Tallen said “I respect her (Mrs Buhari) as the wife of my president and as a woman that I love and respect so much because of what she stands for, as a mother of the nation.
“I do not call her my friend; she is a sister, she is my president’s wife.
“I appreciate her because I believe in her and she believes in me. I give her her due respect as the wife of the President and she also respects me for my age. So, there is this mutual respect,” she said.
Tallen, who is the chairman of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), has represented the first lady at many public functions.
“She is the right-hand woman for Aisha Buhari. She is always at the first lady’s wing of the Villa and all her functions,” an Aso Rock source told Qed.ng.
This online newspaper can’t immediately verify if Mrs Buhari’s influence secured the ministerial nomination of Tallen.
There are, however, those who see it “as compensation for the first lady to douse her frequent attacks of her husband’s government,” our source added.
A member of the APC Board of Trustees, Tallen was a prominent member of the women’s wing of the party’s presidential campaign council under the chairmanship of Mrs Buhari.
A founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Tallen served as minister of state for science and technology under former President Olusegun Obasanjo from 1999 to 2003.
She was elected Plateau deputy governor in 2007 on the platform of the then ruling party.
Tallen left in 2010 to contest the governorship on the platform of the Labour Party in 2011 but lost to incumbent Governor Jonah Jang.
She returned to the PDP in 2012, leaving again in 2015 for the APC.
