konknaijaboy | On 09, May 2014

Dear Mr. President.

I write as a bonafide citizen, I write as a concerned Nigerian, I write as one who feels the pain of the hoi polloi and I write not as a reckless critic, the fact that I was one of the 19 candidates that ran against you in the 2011 general elections doesn’t make me a foe.

I sympathize with Your Excellency for the spate of tragedies that have inundated your watch. I condole with my Countrymen who have been at the receiving end of a harrowing and traumatizing insurgency that has left families dislocated, created more widows, left school children in trauma, turned our daughters to sex slaves and consumed countless lives and properties.

Dear Mr. President some curious happenings around you and some steps that Your Excellency has taken lately benumbs me. It is either you are surrounded by Fifth Columnists as Advisers or that you have deliberately chosen to be unperturbed by the anomie that threatens the nation and civil society.

Why will you cancel a Federal Executive meeting because your Vice President’s younger brother passed on a few days earlier BUT proceed to Kano for a PDP rally the very day after over 75 Nigerians were killed by insurgents via bombs at Nyanya, Abuja and two days after over 200girls were abducted by terrorists in Chibok, Bornu State. Mr. President as the C-in-C the buck stops at your table so kill the politics and the blame game that follows every tragedy, tell your image makers, your Advisers and your bark-dogs to cease the politics and take proactive and profound steps to protect the nation and her citizens, such is the minimum required of you.

Sir, posterity shall hold you responsible not your Aides for the failure of governance. History shall be unkind to you not the opposition should Nigeria implode under your watch therefore get to work and protect us. Get to work and forget the blame game cum politics.

I write concerned that under your watch Nigerians are fast losing that love and community that made Emeka and his Lolo industrialists in Kano decades after the Civil War. Worried that Okon is running back from Yobe and Yemi rushing out of Kaduna. Troubled that Ufuoma has since left Maiduguri no thanks to an insurgency that has become politics.

Yes, Mr. President you have chosen platitudes and soothing words over proactive action. You have allowed your Aides to politicize matters of national security to bemusing and bewildering dimensions.

Dear Sir, politicizing the issue of the missing girls on account of number/record/names and photos shows that we are increasingly becoming a soulless nation. Any responsible nation will take serious steps should one, two or even 10 teenage girls be missing.

No matter the convoluted argument along partisan lines until all those politicking with human lives are able to prove that not a single teenage girl is missing, then they should all cover their faces in shame.

Mr. President just suppose your daughter was involved, your niece or sister; just suppose the same was the case with one of your Aides and or bark-dogs, how will you/they feel, will you/they join the political gerrymandering by the chichidodos saying claptrap and tommyrot about the number/records of the abducted Chibok teenage girls.

Sir, this wave of politics creates a sad testament and a sour epistle particularly about the increasing soulless tendencies and revanchism of the Nigerian persona. We are steadily losing our humanity and the cord that unites us to the messy porridge of politics. Alas our sense of brotherliness and compassion is at its ebb.

Sir, beyond the banality of our politics and our ethno-religious prejudices you MUST reassure us that whilst you remain the C-in-C the life of any and every Nigerian counts.

I write with utter amazement at the troubling cloak of our politics. I write because I deeply believe that the time is always right to do right. I am confident that it is never late to turn things around.

Sir, I must hasten to state unequivocally that some of us your avowed critics are your true friends not foes. We smack you so you can do right but tragically you have for Aides men who would rather tell you what you want to hear than tell you the truth, their price is the messy blood soaked porridge that Aso Rock cooks. Sad.

They got you on air last night in the name of a Presidential Media Chat to politic with matters of national security, sadly they wouldn’t tell you that in such matters action speaks louder than words. The global press and other world Leaders have condemned the cataclysmic spate of, and the harrowing homeland insecurity in far stronger words than you have. Why?

Your Excellency platitudes won’t console the bereaved. Platitudes will not reassure the weary that our worry about who else or where next is unfounded. Platitudes will not bring back the missing girls. And platitudes will not take the buck away from your table, as the C-in-C the buck stops at your table.

Sir, in what was the 7th Presidential Media Chat of your regime you committed an intellectual sacrilege when you said that the Niger Delta Militancy was not terrorism, what was it Sir?
Was it Boko Haram that murdered Security men in Odi for which Obj leveled Odi? Ok that wasn’t terrorism?

You are the President of Nigeria not of the South-South only. You are the C-in-C not Gov. Shema. You are the first citizen not Tinubu or Buhari. Your Party is the ruling party not the APC. And the entire apparatus of State Security and defense is at your command not any other persons’ to wield, so tell your Aides and bark-dogs to be true to you and true to God.

I write to appreciate the present collaboration of your regime with foreign forces to helm in terror. Sir please balance the U.S interest by allowing French and Chinese support that way we can reduce neo-imperialist control. To those who oppose the foreign support may I hasten to say that the fight against terrorism has since become a universal collective.

However Mr. President what troubles the carapace of my mind is the fraternity your regime appears to hold with corruption. It is a curious dalliance most benumbing. Sir, you appear to have allowed the sway of corruption, rather than run government, corruption appears to have taken over as it ruins the nation.

The global press have scored your regime an abysmal low and two days ago the New York Times adjudged your government corrupt. Your bark-dogs and Aides will say otherwise BUT under your watch we have witnessed unbridled corruption ala the fuel subsidy scam, the Pensions scam, various power sector scam, funds missing or stolen from or by the NNPC with the imprimatur of your invincible and infallible Petroleum Minister, the Czar called Deziani Allison-Madueke. What about the Immigration employment scam and the attendant deaths, yet non has been punished, the litany is ad nauseam ad infinitum.

Tragically for politics our people are polarized along religious and sectional lines and have refused to ask questions, it is a social space predominated with issues on insecurity and or whether as a President from the South South you must have a 2nd term. Sadly albeit luck for you the dimensions are so banal that the issues have shifted from whether your scorecard qualifies you for another 4years to “If they stop him, Jonathan will be the last President of a united Nigeria”. Sir your agents and those of the Haramists cannot destroy Nigeria, YES Nigeria shall outlive this Shenanigans.

As I conclude my letter to you may I humbly in bullet-points bring a few salient thoughts for consideration.
•On Boko Haram I suggest you put off your meek cloak and treat terror as such. Identify and drill their agents in your government (as admitted by you) and cut off all supplies (funds and arms) to the Haramists.
•In collaboration with friendly foreign forces and our Military get our girls held in the dreaded Sambisa forest back with alacrity.
•Intensify the fight against corruption and reduce your proclivity for creating Committees as we have several government agencies for just about everything.
•Show that you are in control and in-charge by paying Solidarity visits to our troops in the line of battle in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno States.
•Visit and commiserate with some of the families of the victims of this carnage and conflagration, at least if you visit Obas and attend Party rallies in these times of anomie, you should show some love to the bereaved.
•Play less of politics and do more of governance, let your good deeds speak for you.
•Replace dormant Aides and Advisers with Patriotic hands that way your critics will deplete.
•Deepen faith in Nigeria through your actions and put off the toga that implies supreme allegiance to your region.

Dear Sir, in the first part of this letter I did state unequivocally that the fact that I ran against you in the 2011 polls as a Presidential candidate doesn’t make me your foe. I have not ceased to inform your Aides and acquaintances of the need for a rework of our National Orientation paradigm. I have offered assistance in that wise conscious of the fact that only renewed faith in the Green-White-Green, only re-invigorating hope in our nation’s Anthem, only reassuring trust in our nation’s creed, and only an overhaul of the ethical and moral fabric of state can salvage Nigeria.

Chris Nwaokobia Jnr Dr. – Liberal Democratic Party of Nigeria (LDPN). A presidential candidate in Nigeria’s 2011 elections.

Prof. Chris Nwaokobia Jnr.
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