Opinion!!! Open Letter To Chief Olusegun Obasanjo

Dear respected Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, your excellency sir.

With utmost reverence, I am, at this point in time, compelled to draw your attention to somethings that, as a human being, you might have forgotten.

Of recent sir, you have been in the news through your speeches at many gatherings, fora and platforms locally and abroad.

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To some, you have been in the news for good reasons and naturally to others, for wrong reasons.

For me as the author of this piece, I belong to the latter group and for the following reasons.

1. Sir, you spent eight straight years in office backed with an added advantage of having a military background, you could not effect any tangible change in the affairs of the country.

• Not even the revival of Airline !
• Not the revival of Refineries !
• Not the revival of Vehicle Assembly Plants!
• Not even the construction of the road under your nose, ie, Sango- Abeokuta expressway few meters to ‘your’ farm.

Residents along that axis are still crying up till tomorrow for the pains they go through on daily basis.

Not that they are just crying now, they cried unto you then while you were in office, you did not listen to them.

2. As a reminder sir, you also attempted to subjugate the constitution of the federal Republic of Nigeria through your third term bid, in which you were alleged to have offered the highest volume of bribery in the history of Nigeria so the legislators can tinker with the sacred document in your favour.

3. Sir, it is on record that a sitting, elected Governor was abducted under your watch in broad daylight.

4. Sir, I don’t know if I should add the allegation of certain unorthodox advances wrapped around your neck from right inside your household.

I believe we can actually afford to ignore this in the midst of more pressing fundamental issues.

5. What about The National Library that miraculously turned to Obasanjo Library ? How moral is this sir?

Ditto for Operation Feed The Nation turned to Obasanjo Farm Nigeria?

6. What about our Bicameral legislature? Were you able to modify it to unicameral legislature to reduce cost of governance?

7. What about the $16b power funds controversy which had remained inexplicable till tomorrow?

Your successor, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, alleged that “Obasanjo’s administration spent $11 billion on the sector with nothing to show for it”.

This prompted the probe, with the alleged figure rising to $16b et al.

8. These and lots more are what we could remember you for, if we choose to ignore the untidy and very distractive wranglings between you and your deputy who alleged that you breached a gentleman’s agreement.

While he was alleged to have cut corners in the handling of the sales of our national treasures, a decision not a few Nigerians frowned at without you listening to them.

9. Amazingly sir, you did not only jumped to the street of recent, you are also gallivanting around the globe ably encouraged by some frustrated political “janjaweeds”, to castigate a government that is barely one year in office.

Sir, how fair is this in all honesty?

10. I also overheard you trying to woo our greatest and the greatest vibrant youths to your side through sentimental engagement, alluding to the fact that the present government pushed them to acting wild because they didn’t listen to their hues and cries.

If I may ask sir, did you listen to people when you were there?

If I may also ask sir, considering the hard times we found ourselves in the country presently leading to individuals, organizations and government establishments carrying out one palliative or the other to support the downtrodden, how come we never heard you doing anything of the sort since you love Nigerians including the youths more than anyone else?

When you seized local government funds in Lagos State for 3 years, who on earth did not beg you to release the money in order not to suffocate the councils out of existence, did you listen sir?

And talking about not listening, nobody should be surprised.

It is an open fact that you appointed Special Advisers during your tenure and told them point blank that you are not bounded by their advices, am I lying sir?

How good was your government that Eidris Abukareem entered the studio to release the now popular album, NIGERIA JAGA JAGA, EVERYBODY DEY SUFFER SUFFER…..!!! Or was it not during your regime?

Rather than listening to him, didn’t you frustrate him out of the country?

The thing is, sir, you never wanted anybody to outscore you in any game. Even a game as trivial as ‘ayo olopon’.

Everything must revolve around you. And the only thing that is ever good is what you do, not what any other person does.

I am responding sir, because the hypocrisy is getting out of hand.

The singular reason this economic hardship becomes so pronounced is the the sudden total withdrawal of subsidy on Petroleum products.

But surprisingly, every other candidate had said they would do same if they were in Asiwaju’s shoes.

Peter Obi even puts it more succinctly, ” Subsidy is an organised crime, it would go immediately “.

So what has the present government really done wrong against the background of the sentiments of other candidates on the same issue?

Except of course immediate need to alleviate the hardship in some other ways which as a matter of fact, the government is working assiduously on.

By the time the results start manifesting, everybody will marvel.

Some people are even saying you appear fitter than the incumbent president who is younger than you in age.

And my position is, AND SO WHAT? That’s a God-given grace that is not limited to you sir.

Even at that, how have you been able to convert your fitness meaningfully to the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians when it mattered most?

Probably if you had done so, maybe we will not be in the quagmire we found ourselves today.

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If I may also ask sir, considering the hard times we found ourselves in the country presently leading to individuals, organizations and government establishments carrying out one palliative or the other to support the downtrodden, how come we never heard you doing anything of such since you love Nigerians including the youths more than anyone else ?

In conclusion sir, you cannot be exonerated from the rots we witnessed today because as the titles of two of your books attest, you can not claim those misdeeds are ‘not your will’, because they all happened ‘under your watch’.

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