Journalist
and Ovation magazine publisher Dele Momodu writes his final note to
outgoing president Jonathan in his Pendulum column on
ThisDay. Read what he wrote below and share your opinion..
Our dear President, please permit me to write my last epistle to you
as our leader and Commander-in-Chief. By this time next week, I expect
you to have flown back to Yenagoa via Port Harcourt. How I wish I could have the opportunity of
being on that last trip, not to mock you but to capture your swinging
moods in those few moments of realising that the end has come
eventually. I would love to know how many of your big friends would take the pain to follow you or if most would abandon you
to your fate and move on pronto to the new brides.
Even as a writer with
what I believe is vivid imagination, I’m not able to paint a picture of
the sort of life or future that awaits you in Otuoke, Yenagoa, Abuja,
Chad, Germany, Dubai or wherever you decide to hibernate in the short or
long run.
Let us give thanks to God no matter the situation. You have been the
luckiest man I know in Nigeria or anywhere else for that matter. You
have been in high office for the past 16 years and I doubt if any other
soul has had such uncommon favour. Therefore, it shouldn’t be any big
deal to you, Sir. Though as a human being, one would still expect that
you would feel the pain of rejection and dejection as they usually walk
hand-in-hand like romantics do. It is sad that it had to end like
this despite many warnings and prophesies foretold by me and a few
others.
I’m not sure you saw or read any or all of the open letters published
on this very page in the last five years or so. It was not that I was a
busybody but I was genuinely concerned about the many afflictions that
have kept our nation backward for so long. And my
hope was that you would be able to fulfil a sizable proportion of your
electoral promises of 2011. But that was not to be. Rather, your
government waltzed from one crisis to another while you allowed yourself
to be scammed by the scavengers of power who litter our political
landscape.
All the appeals I made in good faith were rebuffed and pummelled by
some of your aides, friends and supporters but I did not mind them
because I knew a day like this would come when I would sadly have the
chance to say I told you so, even though it was my fervent wish that it
would not happen that way. I am never one to gloat over somebody’s
misfortune and I will not do so now although I have been proved right.
However, the time has finally come to rewind and remind you of those
efforts a few of us made to avert the sort of repercussions that we are
now witnessing. How I wished you had listened at the time. Those who
called us unprintable names and lied through their teeth that you’ve
truly transformed Nigeria more than any other Nigeria have since
abandoned ship. For me and my house, it is a grand opportunity for us to
see
man in his true colour and in animal skin. I have decided to revisit
those letters hoping the incoming government would learn useful lessons
from your example and avoid similar pitfalls.
It is perfectly normal for governments to get drowned in the
cacophony of adulations from soldiers of fortune that have no scruples,
and feel no remorse, about running their country aground. But to
everything
there is always a season and a reason. We cannot rule out the hands of
destiny in the affairs of homo sapiens. That probably explains the
obduracy of your government to take on board all reasonable advice.
I will now quote as copiously as time and space permits from some of
the letters I wrote to you with religious fervour. The first passage
comes from My Kobo Advice For Mr President (ThisDay 08 December 2012):
“Sir, let me say emphatically that the biggest
problem with Nigerian leaders is that once they attain power, they
vacate this earth and migrate to another planet far away from fellow
citizens.
Leaders are elected to serve the people but in Nigeria we are
compelled to serve our leaders… This is why it is difficult for most of
you to know what goes on in the real world…
“I have decided to adopt a new approach in my column. I will take it
upon myself to write this open letter as regularly as necessary and
proffer solutions to different issues, in the hope that you will get to
read it. I will tell you what your aides will never tell you. It is up
to you to carefully read what I write and take your own decision. Let it
be said that we told you but did nothing about it… I’m convinced that
if you know the magnitude of problems confronting Nigerians you will
work harder and change your style of governance unless you’re determined
to fail spectacularly like others before you. I pray this will not be
your portion…”
Sir, on March 1, 2014, I wrote My 20 Billion Advice to C- in-C. I
doubt if you saw or read that as well but I will recap for the sake of
this historical excursion:
“Our dear Commander-in-Chief, I write to you todaywith a bleeding
heart. These past weeks have been extremely bloody in some parts of
Nigeria. Every time I think of it, I get the feeling that those parts
are not part of us. They belong elsewhere, probably in some
remotest corner of the world. Those hapless and helpless citizens cannot
be our own the way that we’ve allowed them to be treated. They are
total strangers in a foreign land. As such, we’ve not been able to offer
them the protection they deserve and the succour they desire. They have
been manacled, mangled, massacred so mercilessly and ruthlessly.
They’ve been butchered like rams in abattoirs. I’ve seen lurid pictures
of fresh corpses and bodies of innocent victims sent to early graves
without reason…
“Sir, please don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming you for this
unprecedented crisis. It did not begin under your watch, although some
may claim, uncharitably perhaps, that it has escalated under it. I
cannot reasonably suggest that you’re uncaring and nonchalant about this
monumental tragedy. I think the
problem is that of miscommunication, as is so often the case with your
administration and this has been amplified by your body language. The
problem of this magnitude requires a more resolute and concerted
response. You cannot treat cancer with Paracetamol.
“In seeking to secure another term in office, you have allowed some
people to amass enemies on your behalf. They did not know how to
persuade people with reason and dialogue as demanded by democracy… Every
critic must be stricken down and
criminalised by the attack-dogs. They dissipate energy on irrelevant
things while the roof is on fire… This is what has led to the implosion
and conflagration in your party, PDP…”
On March 29, 2014, I painted the following scenario about how the
election of 2015 would pan out (it was titled The Anatomy of APC and PDP
2):
“The way it stands is that PDP is poised to present President
Jonathan without any shade of doubt. The PDP primary is going to be a
rubber-stamp and a coronation at once. They are not about to leave
certainty for uncertainty. Ideally Jonathan’s re-election
would have been an easy walkover but not anymore. He now has many forces
to contend with. The first is lack of physical development or visible
performance on ground. Four years are more than enough for a serious and
determined government to set a new tone and tempo for true
transformation or transfiguration. What we are witnessed is too much
movement but so little motion.
“Secondly, he has also brought the roof crashing down by not trudging
the path of frugality that was laid by his dearly departed boss,
President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. The simplicity of his boss was hurriedly
jettisoned for a psychedelic style of governance. ..
“Thirdly, the President’s inability to deal concretely with the grave
security threats and everyday carnage may turn out to be his major
albatross… The fourth problem the President now has to face is how to
neutralise the combined strength of the new opposition called APC. He can no longer gloss over the danger they pose
to his second coming. As a scientist, I’m sure the President understands
that politics is a
game of numbers… Relying on election rigging is becoming obsolete and
increasingly difficult. Social media and mobile telephony are breaking
down those walls that aided electoral malfeasance in our recent past…”
Please, let’s fast forward a bit. On October 18, 2014, I wrote what
many have termed a most defining article I called In Search of
Mathematicians:
“Let’s break it down into simple Maths. Jonathan had a good spread
scoring 25% or more in 31 States. Buhari managed to score 25% or more in
16 States and yet got a cumulative result of over 12 million votes. A
good Mathematician should be able to help us here becauseI wish to show
our President’s handlers that they will pay heavily for complacency if
they assume and take it for granted that they can beat Buhari easily
like PDP had always done in the past…
“My free advice to the Jonathan campaigner is simple; stop projecting
our President as a sectional leader whose only qualification is where
he comes from. Stop raining insults on Northerners and avoid maligning
innocent Muslims. The religious card you wish to play
will never play out in favour of President Jonathan… Our President’s
handlers should worry more about how the goodwill of 2011 got frittered
away in such a jiffy. Above all, they should urgently search for
competent Mathematicians. Believe me, the figures are no longer adding
up…”
Sir, from the above, which represents only a few of the strident
appeals I made for you to rise above the babble of your so-called
adherents and listen to the real people who wished you well, you could
see that I tried my best for you. I warned of the danger signals and the
portending clouds of doom overhanging your administration and the
campaign it was pursuing but I was dismissed as an alarmist. I was
labelled with many names and tags by your Party attack dogs, false
devotees and even obviously sponsored internet trolls who effectively
said I was a rabid supporter of what had been a lost cause before and
would be a losing cause in the imminent elections.
Nevertheless, I persevered as did a few others, not because of
anything other than that your success in government would be the success
of Nigeria and that is what is most important to the generality of the
good citizens of this country.
The rest is history. What has happened is the inability of your team
to read the mood of the nation and make the necessary sacrifices. All
religions speak about the
efficacy of hearkening to admonitions. In the Ifa literary corpus of the
Yoruba there are examples of those who called the Oracle a liar and
suffered dire consequences. My ardent prayer for the incoming government
of Buhari and Osinbajo is that they will
not depart from listening to the sincere voices of their passionate
Nigerian followers. They will not take our people for granted and they
will not treat them with impunity or claim they know what is best for
them when the people do not feel the same way.
As for you Mr President you have run your race ingovernment. God has
been kind to you even at the end by giving you the grace to realise that
you should concede defeat and congratulate your opponent. That has
turned out to be an astute decision, a
masterstroke and possibly the best thing that may ever have happened to
you in all these lucky years of being at the helm of affairs of our
great nation.
At the end of it all, I will leave you with this Ifa verse:
“Baba alawo a ku
Onisegun a rorun,,,” meaning the Oracle will die, the herbalist too
must depart this world and in effect “everything must have an end”.
You came, you saw and it is left to history to determine whether you conquered.
I wish you the best as always.
A woman from Maryland, 34-year-old Kelly Mayhew, died shortly after
getting silicon injections for a behind lift in Queens, NY and police
say the person who was performing the procedure was unlicensed and ran
away from the scene.
