Prof's TV (2024)

31/08/2021

AN OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT AND COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA, MUHAMMADU BUHARI, GCFR

Your Excellency,

I most respectfully bring you greetings from the smallest State in the country by landmass - but arguably the most populous. I hope you are in good health after your time in the UK where you went for medical check-up. It will be unwise, if not irrational, to ask you if you are doing fine because it would be morally irresponsible for the president of Nigeria, the most populous black nation on earth, to be doing fine in the face of the many tragedies we are enduring as a nation. No doubt we are right now in the worst time in our post-Independence history. One has to be a sycophantic optimist to impeach that obvious reality. Personally, I am not fine - no thanks to the long list of unfortunate happenings in the nation. After the shocking, disgraceful, unfortunate but not surprising attack on the NDA by terrorists, and the killing of three officers in the process, without any response in equal measure, it would be even the more irresponsible to be fine as the leader on whose watch such International display of shamelessness has happened.

2. Your Excellency, I read with great joy the news that you lost your appetite after the unfortunate and condemnable killing of traveling fellow citizens in Plateau State. I was equally impressed with the overall reaction by Nigerians, northerners especially, to the act. I join others, too, to condemn the act as I have condemned acts like it before, irrespective of where they occurred. Now that you appear to be awake, even losing your appetite for the right reason, I thought I should write to you; thus this open letter. Permit me, therefore, to add my voice to the patriotic voices of those who have had the courage to write to you concerning our dear nation, Nigeria. It was Malala Yousafzai who said, "When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful."

3. I want to go on record very early in this letter as one who did not vote for you both in 2015 and 2019. I did not vote for you because I believed then, as I do now, that you did not have much to offer a nation on the precipice, especially as someone who knew then - as I do know now - that Nigeria will always be too complex to govern for anyone whose only credential in seeking the highest office in the land was real or imagined INTEGRITY. I knew that your integrity, even if verifiable, was too inadequate a quality for the office of president of any nation, more so Nigeria, and I did my best to educate those who paid attention to me, that you may be a good person, but as someone seeking the office of President, you were a disaster waiting to happen. Your religion was never a consideration for me because in all my participation in elections, I vote people whom I adjudge competent not people whom I adjudge good Christians or Muslims. That means that I am open to voting for even an atheist if I am convinced he or she has what it takes to make Nigeria realise her fullest potential. It is the office of the President after all and not the office of a Bishop. Also, I noticed that since you left office in 1985 after the coup, you had had no known meaningful engagements you were involved in for the good of the Nigerian state and no traces of any personal development effort on your part to suggest you have been preparing for any serious leadership position in the future. Apart from your role as PTDF Chair under the Late dictator, General Sani Abacha, with all the controversies that went with it, nothing actually brought you out for people to see you and appraise your leadership capacity. Some people did not even remember you were still alive, to be honest. That, for me, was truly a red flag. Certainly, I knew in 2015 that we had need for a serious leader, an all-round competent leader, and not one whose only bragging rights were that he had integrity and was a General in the Nigerian Army who was actively involved in fighting the Nigerian Civil War. So I did not vote for you, based on those judgements, among others. Your four years in office from 2015 to 2019 simply confirmed my fears about you and revealed even worse cant of worms I never knew you carried with you - nepotism, favouritism, insensitivity, alethophobia, and sectionalism, sometimes even outright religious bigotry.

4. Let me recount for the sake of fairness to you and your Administration, some of the good strides you have recorded so far as President. First, I am aware of the seriousness with which you deal with the issue of payment of workers' salaries. It is highly commendable that despite all the challenges in the economy, salaries are always paid as and when due, except for some exceptions here and there, now and then, but even so very rarely. Your signing of the New Minimum Wage Act into Law, and your faithfulness to its implementation despite the huge economic downturn and consequent shrinking revenues is worthy of praise too. I also wish to salute your Administration's resistance to heed the unpatriotic calls for retrenchment of Federal workers in the face of biting economic challenges occasioned by a combination of your Administration's poor economic policies and the COVID-19 pandemic. If you had heeded the calls by those enemies of the masses, your decision would have added to the long list of "unfortunates" for your Administration and the consequences would have been brutal and far reaching.

5. I am equally impressed with the many road construction works going on across the country; the Abuja-Kaduna road and Kano-Zaria road, for example. I also salute your Administration's contribution to the rail transport industry. It is truly good for the nation and we expect more investment in this direction, even though we can do better with the quality of coaches, tracks, and the high cost involved.

6. Again, I wish to state that the first two years of your Administration's first term gave hope to many, especially ordinary citizens, in the area of the fight against the behemoth called corruption. But beyond that time, it has been business as usual. Even your supporters who may be willing to choose truth over partisanship or hero-worship can testify that we have come back to where we started. Nothing has significantly changed. You will do well to return to that period when your name alone caused trembling among the corrupt. It seems no one fears you anymore since they have never seen you punish any of your allies accused of corruption, regardless of how weighty the allegations. But in 2015 at Chatham House, London, you said, "On corruption, there will be no confusion as to where I stand. Corruption will have no place and the corrupt will not be appointed into my administration." I hope you know you have not kept to your commitment, unless you want us to believe you either did not mean what you said or did not understand it. When you were accused of selectively going after only members of the opposition, I did not join in that accusation. I did not join in the accusation not because it was not true — it was absolutely true, but because for me if one Administration targets those in the opposition and another Administration different from it comes and targets those of the other opposition, then the targeting will go round over time. So long as the targeted are guilty of the crimes of which they are accused, it does not matter to me what their party is. You have now spent enough years in office to have been able to find members of your political party who are guilty of corruption as well. Please go after them before you leave office. Mr President, please, wake up.

7. In addition, I commend you for signing into Law the Petroleum Industry Bill, despite all the flaws in it. It is a good start, at least. Given the number of failed attempts at passing this bill in the past, after spending billions in the process, I believe that though this is not the best place to be, it is a good step forward all the same.

8. Furthermore, I am aware of the direct conditional cash transfer to poor households which your Administration claims it has been doing, under the Social Investment Programme. Sadly, however, I don't know a single poor household in my community that is benefiting from it - and I know many poor households. So I have my reservations on this. However, that does not mean there are no households benefiting anyway, but it shows that something is fundamentally wrong with how these households were selected. On the whole, despite the many shortcomings in the implementation of this sound initiative, and even though the amount per household is an insult given the skyrocketing inflation in the country, at least thank you for making some families beneficiaries of our commonwealth. One day we will be able to get more of our people to benefit from the righteous sharing of our commonwealth among us all.

9. I cannot forget the useful N-Power programme which your Administration introduced early in your first term. I salute this one because it helped in bringing down the unemployment level. Unfortunately, it was only temporary. During the first enrollment, many of us doubted the sincerity of your Government, but you kept your promise and many people benefited from it. I know a very good number of beneficiaries who did not know anyone before they applied and got it. But since after that first batch, every other batch that followed went the Nigerian way. It is unfortunate that despite your much talked about integrity and "magical" body language, you did not get to fix this too. But at least the beneficiaries are Ordinary Nigerians and that is music to the ear. I do not mean that I am not aware that some unqualified, ineligible, already-employed people also got the N-Power slots. But I am saying it helped all the same. Sadly, though, I had thought that the programme would make room for some of the beneficiaries to gain permanent employment. I am disappointed by the fact that the framers of the programme did not see it that way. I hope we work to make it better in the future

10. Sir, in all fairness, in the area of the war against Boko Haram, your Administration has helped to pin the terrorists to the Northeast, just as was the case before you took over — the last Administration was able to achieve that before the election that brought you to power. However, unlike the year leading to 2014 when Boko Haram threw bombs at will across the country, even in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, they have now been largely confined to the Northeast, especially Borno State, the epicenter of the war against them. Though no one doubts that they are still a big threat, especially with the ISWAP taking roots there, but it is clear that they are within the Northeast.

11. But, Your Excellency, how can anyone even consider applauding you for the achievements you have recorded, when there are a thousand and one unforgivable failings to recount? How do I call any of your modest achievements achievement in the face of the existential threats in the nation on your watch? Of what consequence is the train station when life has now become cheap and 'bruitish' like the Hobbesian state of nature? How does the road you are constructing help the poor man who can neither go to the farm nor sleep at night in his village for fear of being killed or kidnapped? How do the roads under construction address the hopelessness in the north - where killing, kidnapping, abduction of school children and high costs of food and other basic necessities are commonplace? Educate me on how, because I cannot figure it out.

12. While I acknowledge your Administration's success in confining Boko Haram to Maiduguri in particular and the Northeast in general, I hold your Administration responsible for the rise in other crimes in the entire North, especially the Northwest, which is now the hub of terrorism as far as Nigeria is concerned. How else does one describe the constant killings in Plateau State, Zamfara State, Sokoto State, Kaduna State, Niger State, Benue State, and sometimes Nasarawa State? How does one pretend not to see how kidnapping for ransom has become like normal trade in the North, with perpetrators never brought to account despite the widespread nature of the crime? How does one count some of your Administration's successes in the war against Boko Haram in the face of the rampaging killer herdsmen's who are sacking communities at will and with unparalleled impunity? Whatever gain your Administration may give herself credit for quickly pales into nothingness in the face of the existential danger that terrorists have brought upon communities in the north. Yet your Administration has always been quick to defend the killers and even pamper them and attack the victims. When in self defense communities under attack inflict casualty on their killers, you issue official statements calling for arrest of perpetrators, but when the reverse is the case, you call the perpetrators UNKNOWN GUNMEN. This is not a fair way to govern. It is divisive, unjust and irresponsible. So, concerning the overwhelming insecurity challenge in the country which you appear uninterested in tackling, I wish to remind you of just three of your many tweets criticizing the Jonathan Administration, before you won the 2015 election:

One of the tweets read: “It is unacceptable to ignore or minimize the deaths of Nigerian citizens because of elections. It is heart-breaking. This must change.”

Another read: “These Nigerians who have died because our government cannot protect them, they are not politicians. They deserve better. We deserve better.”

And yet another read: “Let me make you this promise today: We will protect your children.We will protect your wealth. We will make this country work again.”

Let your conscience judge you today in the light of these past criticisms of yours.

13. Let me call your attention to something you do not seem to worry about — the growing debt profile of the country since you took power. In 2015 when you took over, the country had a total debt profile of about 12 trillion naira. As of today, August 2021, the debt profile has risen to a staggering 33 trillion naira. It implies that in just over 6 years, your Administration has put this nation in more debt than all the Administrations before you combined. If Nigeria had been turned to Dubai as evidence of your borrowing, no one would raise an eyebrow. But, sadly, that is far from the case. For the avoidance of doubt, according to figures released by the Debt Management Office (DMO) on July 1, 2015, "Nigeria’s total internal and external debt stock stood at N12.06 trillion or $63.5 billion as at the end of March this year, up from N11.2 trillion or $67.726 billion in December 2014." The same DMO put the figure of Nigeria's Public Debt Stock as of March 31, 2021 at N33.107 trillion (about 187.239 billion dollars). That means 21 trillion naira has so far been borrowed by your Administration, with very little to show for it. Despite all these borrowings, where are we with the economy? Concerning the state of the economy, I wish to bring you a quote from your 2015 Chatham House speech. "A development economist once said three questions should be asked about a country’s development: one, what is happening to poverty? Two, what is happening to unemployment? And three, what is happening to inequality?" So how do you answer those questions after your 6 years of being President?

15. Mr President, as far as I can recall, you did not come with the intention to govern for the benefit of all. Unfortunately, you did not hide it from anyone who cared to listen to you, right from the start. Even before you were sworn in, in an interview in the USA, you were asked how you intended to deal with the issue of diversity and you responded by saying you were not expected to treat those who gave you 97% of their votes the same as those who gave you 5%. You did a lot to control the humongous damage after the predictable ensuing backlash but have never managed to succeed at it. Assuming you have managed to act differently in actual governance these past 6 years, you would have shamed those of us who thought you meant what you said. Instead, you have doubled down in a to-hell-with-you-all fashion. Your appointments to key positions and your replacement of those whose tenures expired with those from the north, and even more so from your tribe and/or religion, have done nothing to allay the fears of people like us about your intent to share this nation into 97% vs 5%. It is very unfortunate that this has marked your presidency in both terms. But those who followed your activities after the country's return to Democracy in 1999 may not be surprised. I recall that your only known engagements on behalf of the people before you became president were your visit to the Government of Oyo State, leading a team of other Muslim Northerners, to warn the Government about the killing of your kinsmen in that State, and the many arguments you put up in favour of Boko Haram against the Government of Jonathan, saying at some point that the war against Boko Haram was a war against the north, as Mr. Doyin Okupe stated in an interview with Channels TV on December 23, 2015. I think it is clear in how you have been leading this country what you believe about Nigeria at your core. But, as you can see, this too shall pass away. For those who may not have been aware of that visit to Oyo State, I wish to bring in a quote for their sake. In Vanguard's November 18, 2012 Special Report, Agbaakin Kehinde Olaosebikan wrote concerning that visit to the then Governor of the State, Late Lam Adesina: "Emitting fire, the general accused Lam and the government of Oyo State of complicity in the killing of over 68 Fulani people in Oke Ogun area and perversion of justice.

His words: 'Your Excellency, our visit here is to discuss with you and your government our displeasure about the incident of clashes between two peoples… the Fulani cattle rearers and merchants are today being harassed, attacked and killed like in Saki. In the month of May, 2000, 68 bodies of Fulani cattle rearers were recovered and buried under the supervision and protection from a team of Mobile Police from Oyo State Command.

'That some arrests were made by Oyo State Police Command in the massacre with their immediate release without court trial. This was said to have been ordered by Oyo State authorities and they were so released to their amazement. The release of the arrested suspects gave the clear impression that the authorities are backing and protecting them to continue the unjust and illegal killings of Fulani cattle rearers…"'

16. So, today people are being killed, and you seem not to bother. Killers are not arrested, unless they are suspected to be killers of your kinsmen, you find nothing wrong with it. Arrests are sometimes made involving suspected Fulani herders allegedly involved in killings across the country, but those are often swiftly relaleased without charge. That too is now ok with you. Whenever Miyetti Allah leaders brag about being responsible for some Mass atrocities, they are never arrested or even invited for questioning. Still you find no wrong with that now. Yet IPOB is now a terrorist Organization, with Nnamdi Kanu her leader in detention (I am not a fan of his style anyway, but I do not believe iPOB is a terror organization). Sunday Igboho is also in detention today for rising up in defense of his people against deadly AK-47 wielding herdsmen. No known sponsors of the atrocities in the north are in detention right now and the sleep-killing and peace-denying killer herdsmen are not a terrorist organization according to your presidential convenience. This injustice still does not matter to you. I have observed though that the only killings that seems to bother you to the point of taking away your appetite are those in which your kinsmen are victims. That, Mr President, is not how to be President for all.

17. Granted that appointments are your exclusive preserve, to be done purely based on your preferences, but in a nation as diverse as Nigeria, in a country so much connected to ethnicity and religion, one would have thought that you should know better to use such privileges of office to ensure that whatever gives your Administration away as privileging some ethnic groups, tribes or religion and disadvantaging others is done away with for the sake of unity. But here we are, no thanks to your insensitivity, we are most divided along all known fault lines. How you and your men fail to see the rise of IPOB, OODUWA, and MIDDLE BELT agitators as direct consequence of your Administration's enthronement of nepotism, clannishness and favouritism as state policy is something that baffles me. A careful senior secondary school student in the Arts should be able to figure the correlation. But all we see are attacks by the "presidency" on all those who try to point these out to you. The office of the president has never been more desecrated and reduced to an attack dog against critics than now. Every single person that has voiced concern in this direction has been attacked personally, accused of planning to upturn your Government or accused of corruption. For those who are not northerners or who are not Northerners enough", some "northern enough" northern groups even add to the State House's attack some threats. Garba Shehu, the one Nigerians love to call "The Presidency", is truly a star boy in reducing the office of the President to one for settling pettiness. But you appear satisfied with his below the belt activity, indicating his ignoble actions have your blessing.

18. In the area of health, we have seen the evidence of your commitment to improving the health sector. If anyone doubts that commitment, let them check and see the hospital where you were treated when you had ear problem and where you spent almost over a hundred days on admission to save your life. In fact let those who cannot see your commitment to this sector ask themselves where you went to recently for three weeks to see your doctors. If you have done enough for this sector, then we would know from the names of the local hospitals where you have received medical attention in this country since you assumed power. I chose to address this issue this way to make you try to reconcile what you told Nigerians concerning medical tourism before you took over as President in 2015. Talk, as they say in Nigeria, is cheap. In summary, the evidence of the "good state" of our health sector on your watch are two: where you go for your medical check-ups and treatments as our President, and the ongoing strike by Resident Doctors in the country. The recent rush by doctors, including highly prized consultants, to Sheraton Hotels and Towers in Abuja, venue of a recruitment interview by representatives of the Government of Saudi Arabia, is a loud testament to your commitment to the sector. And in terms of budget to the sector, your Administration has not shown any seriousness at all. For the record, these are the budgetary allocation figures to the health sector since you came into office in 2015, on an annual basis, but first that of 2014: In 2014, N262B was allocated to health, which was about 6% of the total budget of N4.962 trillion. In 2015, the health budget was N237 billion, about 5.5 percent of the national budget of N4.36 trillion. In 2016, a total of N257 billion, equaling 4.13% of the total federal budget. The total sum of N304 billion was proposed for the Federal Ministry of Health, amounting to 4.17 percent of the national budget, a poor improvement on the 2016 budget of 4.13 percent. In the 2018 budget, 340.45 billion naira was allocated to Health. That was 3.9% of the total national budget of 8.6 trillion naira. The Federal Government allocated N315.62 billion to health in 2019, which was just 3.6% of the total federal budget. In the 2020 budget of N10.33 trillion, the health sector received only 4.14 percent, that is, N427.03 billion out of the total budget. Finally, a breakdown of the 2021 appropriation bill presented to a joint session of the National Assembly by you showed that only 4.526 per cent (about N592.166 billion of the proposed N13.082 trillion) was allocated to health.

Recall that in 2018, according to a publication in Business Day on December 29, Nigeria's healthcare ranked 187th out of 195 countries. Nigeria ranked lower than Egypt (64th), Kenya, South Africa and Rwanda.

19. In the education sector, the budget allocation to the sector in the last six years of your Administration tells how much you prioritize this sector which, sadly, is the sine qua non of our development. Alfred Olufemi, writing in the Premium Times of October 24, 2020, said: "Despite the challenges faced by Nigeria’s education sector and calls for the government to increase funding to the sector, President Muhammadu Buhari is proposing to give the sector its lowest allocation in 10 years, when measured as a percentage of the total spending plan." Out of N13.08 trillion budgeted for 2021, N742.5 billion was allotted to education, representing a platey 5.6 percent of the total spending plan. In the 2015 budget, the last by your predecessor, we had 10.7%, the highest in the last decade. In 2016, the education sector got N369. 6 billion — 7.9 per cent of the total budget, N550. 5 billion was allotted in 2017, representing 7.4 per cent of the total budget; N605.8 billion in 2018 -7.04 per cent ; N620.5 billion – 7.05 per cent of the 2019 budget and N671.07 billion (6.7 per cent) in the 2020 appropriation bill. We can pretend all we want, we can pay lip service to the sector for as long as we want, but until and unless we face it with a sense of urgency and the seriousness required in an emergency situation, we will never leave the woods. You have done nothing serious to show you understand the urgency of the hour in this regard. The strikes by ASUU, ASUP, SSANNU, COESSU, etc. are evidence of your commitment to education. How do I blame you, anyway, when none of your children has been educated in the country.

20. To summarize the present state we are in, I wish to draw your attention to an article I read recently on Nigeria. In that article titled “Buhari’s Nigeria now a failed state – Foreign policy," the author wrote:
"Its economy is usually estimated to be Africa’s largest or second largest, after South Africa. Long West African hegemon, Nigeria, played a positive role in promoting African peace and security. With state failure, it can no longer sustain that vocation, and no replacement in sight. Its security challenges are already destabilizing the West African region in the face of resurgent jihadism, making the battles of the Sahel much more difficult to contain. And spillover from Nigeria’s failures ultimately affects the security of Europe and the United States.Eighty to 90 UN members are weak. Weakness consists of providing many, but not all, of essential public goods, the most important of which are security and safety. If citizens are not secure from harm within national borders, governments cannot deliver good governance (the essential services that citizens expect) to their constituents. Most of all, all failed states are violent. All failed states harbour some form of violent internal strife, such as civil war or insurgency. Nigeria now confronts six or more internal insurrections and the inability of the Nigerian state to provide peace and stability to its people has tipped a hitherto very weak state into failure.According to political theory, the government’s inability to thwart the Boko Haram insurgency is enough to diagnose Nigeria as a failed state. But there are many more symptoms." If that is not scary enough, then you are truly scary.

21. Mr President, except in the constant shifting of blame for your failure to live up to the very high expectations that greeted your coming to power in 2015, there is just no way in which you have fared differently from those before you whom you criticised - and rightly too - while you were still seeking the office you now occupy. If anything, you have performed worse off. Today, I see you embrace those you once called thieves, I see you at table with those you once called corrupt. I also see you get edgy when criticised, you pay more attention to remaining in office (regime protection) than governing, you are grossly averse to anything and anyone that is not singing your praises, you love the company of political scammers and sycophants, you pay more attention to the politician than the man on the street whose vote brought you to power. The result is that the poor — the very constitiuency that mobilised to bring you to power with their votes and even resources, the people who believed in you when the elite RIGHTLY ganged up against you in alll your previous attempts before 2015 — are poorer, on your watch.

22. Mr President, in 2011, when you were pontificating all over the place as the man of integrity, you said the following concerning the very shady and corrupt payment of subsidy:
“WHO is subsidising who? The Nigerian oil industry was developed with Nigerian capital. Most of the experts are Nigerians, if you go to the fields. It is Nigerian capital; it is Nigerian oil. What I understand that Nigeria should charge Nigerians is the cost of one barrel at the wellhead and then the cost of transportation to the refinery, the cost of refining it and its cost at the pump. If anybody says he is subsidising anything, he is a fraud. So all these people talking about subsidy, who is subsidising who?” Six years down the line, your regime is on record as paying more in subsidy annually than any other regime in history. According to the above speech of yours, your Administration is a fraud because it says repeatedly that it is subsidizing PMS. Talk indeed is cheap! I have been waiting, Mr President, to hear or read your apology to gullible Nigerians whom you misled in that self-righteous speech but I have waited six years now without success. Well, history will never forget.

23. It was Rasheed Ogunlaru who said, "Legacy is not what's left tomorrow when you're gone. It's what you give, create, impact and contribute today while you're here that then happens to live on." Mr President, are you aware that you have less than 2 years to the end of your second term as a two-term president? Well, you have precisely 20 months and 28 days more to be recorded in the history books as a FORMER PRESIDENT. Let me remind you, Sir, that when you failed to hit the ground running in your first term in 2015, time did not stand still for you. When you failed to appoint ministers in good time, when you failed to notice the division the 2015 election left in its wake and chose to focus on frivolities, blame game and cross accusations, instead of seeking to heal the nation, time did not pause for your sake. Now, Mr President, time is almost up for you. Does it bother you, then, that in as many months, you will be leaving behind a legacy? Are you concerned about the kind of legacy you will be leaving behind? Let me share with you the legacies you will MOST DEFINITELY be leaving behind, Mr President. You will be leaving behind a legacy of kidnapping, banditry, terrorism - as Nigeria ranks the 3rd most terrorised nation on earth, division along regional, religious and ethnic lines. Also, part of your legacies are near total anarchy in the country, near institutionalisation of the crime of abduction for ransom, backwardness in the education sector, endemic corruption, nepotism, clannishness, favouritism, deplorable state of the economy and health sector, drowning poverty — as Nigeria remains the poverty capital of the world, and kindred other societal ills. Does none of these bother you?

24. What about hunger? Does it bother you that food crisis is at our doors already? When people cannot go to farm anymore due to insecurity, when farmers are forced by invading killer herdsmen ravaging their villages to run away and abandon their villages, when cultivated farmlands with crops approaching maturity and harvest are eaten by the animals of these herdsmen or destroyed by invaders, when the agricultural industry is no longer attracting investors due to endemic insecurity challenges, Mr President, I ask again, does the looming food insecurity bother you as it bothers me? I don't think you are aware. And if you are not aware, please let this alarm ring loud in your ear. LOSE YOUR APPETITE AGAIN, PLEASE!

25. To be brutally frank, Your Excellency, I know it will be hard to get it right at this point, but don't bow out without an effort, try. Have you seen how the world treats even Presidents when they leave office? Ask Presidents Jonathan (this may be an exception because your failings have continued to make him more loved than when he was in office, even within your northern base), Obasanjo, etc. In the case of Jonathan, for example, some of those who sang his praises and insulted everyone who disagreed with him while he was in office abandoned him and joined your Government soon after he left office. Some were not even patient enough to wait until he left office; they abandoned him while your Administration was still months away from taking off. You will soon be a former President, and you will see how much of an unwise decision it is making sycophants your main advisers.

26. For the purpose of emphasis, I want you to know that as it stands today, there has never been any time previously in the history of our nation when human life was as cheapened, reduced to nothing, and denied dignity as now. Never before have we seen the level of callousness, insensitivity, and indifference on display by a government in the face of unabeting killings of its citizens by those known people whom the Government has elected to conveniently call unknown gunmen. That, Mr President, is going to form part of your inglorious legacy. Therefore, I advise you, Sir, to call for a national dialogue. Begin to speak like a father to all, be fair to all communities that have been ravaged by evil people, from Plateau to Benue, Southern Kaduna to Birnin Gwari, Zamfara to Katsina, Sokoto to Niger. Resettle communities displaced by terrorists, give hope to the victims of actions of Terrorists across the country, all those who have been affeted by the dastardly acts of barbarity. In the name of God, PERISH THE THOUGHT OF FORGIVING THE SO CALLED "REPENTANT TERRORISTS". Prosecute all of them rapidly. It is an insult to their victims for anyone to contemplate forgiving them . Only the victims can forgive them, not government, and much less a government that has done nothing to ameliorate heir sufferings. Whosoever is advising you otherwise does not mean well for you or the country.

27. Also, Mr President, make sure you put your weight behind Nigerians in their call for the near total automation of our elections, including the transmission of results. Don't deprive our elections of the benefit of this possible game-changer in our elections. No one decried the corruption and lack of transparency in our elections more than you before you were elected in 2015. If you are the man of integrity you claim, if you are the promoter of free, fair and credible elections you love to project yourself to be, then grab this opportunity and use it to give to us this gift as your own way of giving back, being a beneficiary of a similar gift from your predecessor which he gave US (YOU ESPECIALLY) shortly before the election that brought you to power in 2015. He has written his name in gold by that act as even you can testify. As you well know, that statesmanly act by him of signing into law an electoral reform act just before an election he was going into as a major (and "embattled") contestant, made your victory possible, among other things. Sir, remember that if you choose to sign the ELECTORAL REFORM ACT into Law without the electronic transmission of results component, someone will come and do it with the electronic transmission of results component one day. And you will be remembered as an accomplice to the crime of electoral malpractice because you fail to insist on the inclusion of what most Nigerians believe is going to be the panacea to what many consider to be the major source of fraud in our present electoral process — the Manual Transmission of Election Results. It is your choice to make. Ours is to watch and record your action against your name in history. We, the so called ordinary citizens, believe that if you give us an electoral reform law with electronic transmission of results in it, it will enable us to fairly, freely, and transparently elect leaders of our choice and begin the genuine process of building a better Nigeria, a privilege which the crooked elections we have been having, including the last two which you were declared winner of, did not grant us.

28. Further still, in your last full budget before you leave office, the 2022 Budget, let your intention for the education and health sectors be made abundantly clear. Leave no one in doubt. Make the percentages of allocation to these sectors their highest ever in our history. Let us know you understand what we need for our development going forward. We will be watching.

29. May I also advise that you declare a state of emergency in the security sector and unleash the full weight, might and wrath of our most feared, most revered military on the enemies of our peaceful coexistence: bandits, kidnappers, Boko Haram, killer herdsmen, whatever the names, let them all be summarily sent "home" in order to act as a deterrent to others who may be willing to join them. We cannot continue to pretend we don't know them. Go all out for their sponsors, regardless of their positions in society and geography. Let us see your Administration make a public show of some of the sponsors like you bragged about doing months ago - though we have not heard anything since. If you don't do it now, history will record this failure against you.

30. As your days in office wind down, I wish to give you this unpopular advice. Have the courage to dismiss your spokesmen. The two of them have helped in winning for you more enemies than friends. They speak to Nigerians on your behalf with disrespect, disdain, insensitivity, ignorance and bitterness, all qualities below the office of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of our nation. They have turned you into a Commander-in-Mischief instead. Sack them now or at least rein them in. They are the worst image makers of any President I have seen here at home and abroad. They are not what we need as a nation, unless their actions are satisfactory to you. And if that is the case, then it is deeply unfortunate.

31. Finally, Mr President, visit states worst hit by the insecurity crisis ravaging the North - Kaduna, Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina, Plateau, Benue and Niger States. And when you go there, Sir, make sure you visit the IDPs and talk to them with empathy. Apologize on behalf of your Government and all of us for their victimhood. Promise them succour and mean it - carry it through. Be like a father - that is who you are to all of us in this country by virtue of your office. In fact, in your own case, even by virtue of age, you are old enough to be a father to many. Be that father, and do so now, remembering that "the greatest failure of all is the failure to act when action is needed." ~ John Wooden

32. Sir, I deliberately left this point for the last. Are you aware that it took 86 days for over 100 pupils of Tegina Islamiya school kidnapped in Niger State to be released (August 26, 2021) after the alleged payment of 60 million naira by their poor parents? Are you aware that there are 31 students of Bethel Baptist High School, Kaduna, kidnapped over 50 days ago, in the hands of kidnappers? Are you aware that over 60 students of Federal Government College, Sabon Yauri, Birnin Kebbi, are still in the hands of their abductors? Does Leah Sharibu ring a bell in your ear? Well, there are many more not reported. If you are the man of integrity you are touted to be, if you are the compassionate one your supporters want us to believe you are, THEN DO EVERYTNING TO RESCUE THESE ONES WITHIN ONE MONTH BECAUSE IT IS YOUR FAILURE THAT HAS PUT THEM THERE AND NOT FOR ANY FAULT OF THEIRS. Also, Mr President, I don't know whether you see what I see in the spate of kidnappings in the country, especially of young school children. Does it not bother you that these young ones will grow up feeling betrayed, let down by the government and people of Nigeria? If they harbour this legitimate bitterness in their hearts against the State - as some of them most definitely will, don't you think we will reap the bitter fruit of our negligence and failure to act in the future? Can we handle it, or you think it should not bother you since you probably would have been gone from this side of life by then? The same is true for those innocent kids who have been turned into orphans by satanic elements among us whose identity we choose not to know. Honestly, does it not bother you? I am scared, Mr President. Let us do something now to stop the spread of this evil and its attendant consequences

33. I pray that God will give you the wisdom to see clearer and do more for the unity of this nation in the remaining days of your time in office than you have been able to do so far. May this nation know peace and prosperity again. May the poor have food to eat at affordable costs, the means to treat himself when he is sick, the guarantee of security of his life and property, shelter that is decent to live in, roads that are safe and motorable, schools that are both safe and worthy of the name for his children, potable water for drinking and electricity for both his business and domestic use. Amen.

34. Let me end with this confession. If God asked me today what one wish I had for Nigeria, I would say to him rapidly, without thinking twice: PLEASE, LORD, MAY BUHARI NEVER HAPPEN TO US AGAIN IN NIGERIA, EVER.

Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

Long Live the Resilient Citizens on Earth!!

Long live all Patriots in this great Republic!!!

Emmanuel Junior Zakka
A Concerned (not Lazy) Nigerian Youth

Prof's TV

22/01/2023

21/12/2021

31/08/2021

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Videos

KILLINGS IN GIWA

Thanksgiving Mass of Stephen Shuani, one of the Afaka39

Memorial: 05:05:2021

Message for men

The Platform 2016

THE PLATFORM 2017

Marking the 50th day in captivity

What has changed, Sir?

Governor El-Rufa'i in 2014

2nd TVC Interview

The 1.5billion dollars refinery maintenance

THE MATHEMATICIAN

TVC Interview with Da Prof

Shortcuts

Share