2013 and letter writing

President Jonathan claimed that Obasanjo’s letter coming soon after the Speaker of the House, Aminu Tambuwal had echoed the body calling of President Jonathan as encouraging and condoning corruption and not too long after the Governor of the Central Bank, undoubtedly one Nigeria’s best technocrats, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had written to say the about $50 […]

President Jonathan claimed that Obasanjo’s letter coming soon after the Speaker of the House, Aminu Tambuwal had echoed the body calling of President Jonathan as encouraging and condoning corruption and not too long after the Governor of the Central Bank, undoubtedly one Nigeria’s best technocrats, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had written to say the about $50 billion of oil sales were not remitted to the CBN.
What President Jonathan alluded to in his letter was that some persons or sections of the country were plotting to oust him while at the same time failing to address the technical issues raised by the letter written by his political godfather. Issues which most of us believe are germane.
Nigerians are aggrieved by Obasanjo’s letter not because the issues raised are not in the minds ofmillions of citizens but perhaps because most Nigerians see and blame what is happening today on the wickedness of Obasanjo who thought it wise to impose a sick man and an incompetent and inexperienced person on the whole of the country in 2007.
The argument is that General Obasanjo lacks the moral authority to complain that Goodluck Jonathan is weak and dong very poorly. This most of us saw as early as 2007 when single handedly Obasanjo gave out Nigeria to Yar’adua and Jonathan. I never expected anything different from what we are getting as a nation and as a people.
Coming to think of it in another breadth, it is not totally not out of place for Obasanjo to feel frustrated and try to clean his name in history as being responsible for foisting incapacity on Nigeria. I am not too surprise because General Obasanjo has never kept quite since he left office in 1979.
His attitude pitched him against General Abacha who almost killed him. When Abacha himself died, Obasanjo was released from incarceration by Abdulsalam Abubakar who in cohort with IBB, TY and other retired military officers mainly of Northern extraction thought the best person to rule Nigeria was Obasanjo.
They foisted him on the nation and the end is now history because all those who were responsible for his release and ascendency to power paid the supreme price of embarrassment of various magnitudes. Today, he is paying the same price others who brought him to power faced in his hands.
The implication of all this is that Nigerian ruling class must come to the realization that while it is not advisable to lie fallow while leadership is being recruited, it is important that certain other considerations must be put in place if those godfathers are ever to be relevant in the scheme of things that happen within the polity.
I see a perfect alignment in what happened in Ilorin in 2011. Both Bukola and Abdulfatah are a shining example of what a god father and son should be in a democratic dispensation and I think it is critical for others to take a lesson in what happened and what is happening in Kwara so that disasters like Goodluck Jonathan would no longer surface within Nigeria’s political landscape.
I love the letters written in the year and I must confess that what Obasanjo wrote was a bombshell and the president was unable to answer a bit of it. In his response, PresidentJonathan only raised and brush aside critical issues raised by General Obasanjo. There was no single concrete answer on any of the critical truths raised in Obasanjo’s letter.
As usual, the president resorted to unintelligent tricks and running round critical issues and accusations leveled against him and his government. I understand that the reply was put together by a team of crack egg-heads. What a shame, the content of the reply only exposed the weakness we face as a nation. I believe that my intelligent graduate students could have done better than what this assembly of presidential egg heads did.
In any case, it was necessary that President Jonathan try to answer and respond to the issues General Obasanjo raised, and in doing so, we thought reason, rationality would blend with intellect to attempt to answer, but the reply simply confirmed the magnitude to the allegations made by Obasanjo as was reflected in watered and flawed response from the villa.
Sanusi’s letter is about to be swept under the carpet as usual. Reason being that there was reconciliation between the NNPC, MOF and CBN. What came open after the so called reconciliation was that it was not $50 billion but about $12 billion that was not remitted. Where is the $12 billion? They want to cover our faces so that it goes unattended to. Nigerians must continue to ask the question and insist that even if it is $1, it must be accounted for.
We have seen similar cases in the past. The fuelsubsidy scam has gone unattended to, SEC issue is also under the carpet, Stella Oduah and her bullet proof cars is also beingneatlyswept under the carpet but one thing that must be clear is that these infractions would be attended to either by this government or any other one that might come either in the immediate or distant future.
I believe that Nigeria will work and work to the glory of God and humanity. This mess cannot continue. Again, all these developments under President Jonathan speak volume about Mr. Speaker’s body language hypothesis. The Speaker is right. We all are seeing how Jonathan and his gang are fighting corruption the most recent in Kano, where democratically elected legislators were arrested for making laws.
The Kano episode stands as one of the most embarrassing stupidity of the federal state. They are wrong because they are fighting a lost battle. It will take ages to defeat the tremendous intervention that the Kwankwaso led government is doing in that state. I am not surprised that the EFCC is in Kano, I expect it in Sokoto, Ilorin, Yola, Port Harcourt, Dutse and even Minna.
As 2014 sets in, Nigerians should expect more desperation from a ship that is sinking. My advice is that they should act with relative decorum because as Frantz Fanon said, this act will never delay their day of judgment.