Nigeria, June 19 -- Between 2010 and 2015, when Goodluck Jonathan was president of Nigeria, his wife, Patience Jonathan, became somewhat of a public spectacle. Nigerians, long fed up with public officers in the country, seized on her grammatical gaffes, exaggerated them, and made it a point of duty to needle her endlessly. It did not help that her husband's tenure coincided with a tumultuous period in Nigeria's history.

As First Lady, a position long loathed by Nigerians for the tendency of its occupants to be overbearing and high-handed, she also did not help the conversation around her with the way she put herself about. Many Nigerians came to perceive her as overbearing and even outrageous. Some of it was true, even though the propaga...