A letter for Buhari, a letter for his compatriots
Dear Mr President, Now that the issue of your successor, at least within the frame of your party has been decided, and you have exactly 11 months left to the end of your term, it is important to write to you one last time in the hope of drawing water from a stone. After all, […]
Dear Mr President,
Now that the issue of your successor, at least within the frame of your party has been decided, and you have exactly 11 months left to the end of your term, it is important to write to you one last time in the hope of drawing water from a stone. After all, miracles do happen.
I have been critical of your administration out of a deep love for our country, for which you once bled. What most people don’t know, is that the last time I voted in a general election, I voted for you. But that was way back in 2007. My faith in most of our politicians, including you, and the system, has suffered since then. But I am just an individual and here, we are talking about the collective.
Over the last seven years, Nigerians have looked to you for leadership. People gave their lives to see you elected president because they believed in you to give the country a sense of direction. That leadership they sacrificed their lives for has not manifested in seven years of your administration. There is still one more year to go. And miracles do happen.
Nigeria has never been as deeply divided as it is now perhaps since the civil war. It is sad that you have made no visible effort to unite the country, address and assuage regional concerns and move the country in the direction of unity and faith, peace and progress. Painfully, you have shown complete disregard for the daily massacres of Nigerians such as the one in Owo last weekend, which only built on what had happened dozens of times in the North, in Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto, Niger and other states.
When these killings happen, Nigerians often turn to you for leadership. Each time, you turned your nose up, as if offended by the stench of their death, their suffering and their expectations.
I guess many missed the point that providing leadership is not your strongest suit because of the way the political party you founded, the CPC, floundered into the 2011 elections, like a fish out of water, in a state of chaos, while you tunnel-visioned your presidential ambition. Or how your reticence to provide leadership cost your APC control of the senate in which it had a majority in 2015. Not to talk of those long eight months it took you to form a cabinet as the country dithered.
Since January, there have been queues at filling stations. Six months and counting and the minister of petroleum, who happens to be you, sir, has neither addressed the problem nor Nigerians. Universities have been on strike since February. Last time they were shut for a year, under your watch. Mr President, it would do you no harm to intervene and show leadership to get campuses open again.
The economy has been in free fall since 2015. Inflation is galloping towards the cliff; commodity prices are tearing the roof and earnings have shrunk because the naira is in free fall. Nigerians looked to you and still you turn up your nose.
Worse is the insecurity. Bandits govern the North West, Boko Haram the North East, IPOB is terrorising the South East and herdsmen are rampaging. Kidnappings are rampant. Soldiers are being raped and beheaded, worshippers shot at, villagers annihilated, farmers slaughtered, travellers abducted, and in all of these, you sir, turned away, leaving your henchmen to issue statements that carry neither weight nor assurance. Where is the justice the victims were promised in these condemnations? Where are the perpetrators these statements promised to hunt down? Where is the hunt for these perps?
I know you are tired and looking forward to retirement. But could you use this last year of your administration to improve the light in which history will remember you? Could you use this one year to do the one thing Nigerians expected of you, something many have long ago given up hope of seeing in you—actually provide leadership and perhaps stop your country’s free fall into a failed state?
From this tired Nigerian who will not be bothering you anymore.
Thank you.
Fellow Nigerians,
Your choices for the next general elections have been lined up for you. Your next president, barring some divine intervention, might be one of two bloody rich septuagenarians or a left-field candidate from a small party.
While we debate the merits of each candidate there are several things to consider:
One is that having a president from your region might just be a burden. The whole of the country has suffered this administration but none more than the North, where the president is from. The damages the North incurred during Buhari’s presidency, from terrorism to banditry to increased poverty—all of which the president has persistently turned up his nose in contempt at—to the stigma, with which northerners are perceived, through the criminalities of herdsmen, as aggressors and sacred cows, will take years to address and reverse. All things considered, having this president from the North has been a great affliction for the North.
Secondly, Peter Obi might be a left-field option but idealism and reality are two different things. The majority of Mr Obi’s fan base is on Twitter. Not many of them have the energy or reach to do the actual grunge work it requires to make a man president of a complex country like Nigeria. Obi does not have the name recognition or network to convince the farmer in Talata Mafara or the hunter in Ogun that he is the best option for them. The Nigerian system requires that he has allies, often acquired through allegiance within a major party, to buy into the Obi brand. He certainly won’t find enough of those allies in the Labour Party, which simply does not have the political resources to draw people like that who could battle in trenches that his arms cannot reach. After all, as popular as Buhari was in the North, he needed those allies in the south and found them in the framework of the APC. Obi might be the one to say the right things, propose the right ideas and engage meaningfully with issues—with far more finery than say Tinubu brings to his sometimes-crude pronouncements—but the grassroots, those who actually go out to vote, cannot hear him because he simply cannot reach them.
This brings me to the poignant question Ogbonnaya Onu asked at the convention concerning the impending loss of the Southeast in the power game. This loss has been evident since 2015 if we are being honest. I am not a fan of zoningtocracy or whatever it is we have going on in this country. It deprives the best candidates of the chance to serve. But I recognise the rationale for it—national unity and integration and a sense of belonging for all. What happened at these conventions, both PDP and APC, what many analysts saw coming from years ago, is that the North and Southwest are playing rondo or piggy in the middle with the Southeast principally because of the way the Southeast had positioned itself politically.
We might violently argue with the truth because it is unpalatable and may seem unkind, but despite all the grandstanding on zoning, in the end, as these exercises have demonstrated, politics is a game of numbers, and deep pockets, well, among other things. The Southeast is the smallest region, size and population-wise. It needs crucial alliances to profit from zoning. For reasons of historical trauma, the Southeast has failed to secure the right alliances that will position it to take this opportunity. Let’s not mince words, the perpetual victim narrative that the region deploys has undermined the region’s political judgements. If you don’t have the numbers, have the smarts. Surely it is not beyond a region with some of the finest brains in the country to come up with a strategy that would see it get on track. While sentiments are valid, to get what you want, one has to manage those sentiments. How do you win a country with ungovernable angst? (I know some people will still call this victim-blaming and that is fine).
In the final analysis, a Nigeria that works for all is infinitely better than a Nigeria that works for a few. This Nigeria is working for a few.
Sincerely,
This concerned Nigerian