Dele Momodu : dele.momodu@thisdaylive.com

Dear Mr President, I’m pleased to write you again through this medium. Thanks for responding quickly to some of the suggestions I gave in my recent letters to you. Even if I and many of my readers had serious doubts about your ability to take on the hawks in your political party, you have demonstrated sufficient courage in recent time. The essence of this latest epistle is to encourage you to do more.

Your choice of Ministers I believe is impressive, minus a few controversial names that popped up like a violent bottle of champagne. But that can be excused as what happens when we have favours and friendships to settle. Let the one without bias or weakness amongst us cast the first stone. Never mind Sir, the bubbles would always burst and eventually settle. As for me and my house, we salute the general direction of your selection. I’m particularly impressed about the fact that most of your cabinet members are well-educated. They are also young and cosmopolitan. And more exciting is the obvious fact that your ladies combine brains and beauty. You are surely on the road to something great if you stay on this path.
There is no doubt that God can use anyone he likes to perform His miracles. The Bible is filled with stories of humble beginnings. Unfortunately, the story of Nigeria is a depressing one. Many of those who had your kind of Odysseus journey often forget where they are coming from. When I was in primary school, my father made sure I wrote on all my books, “Remember the Son of whom you are.” It reminded me constantly of the fact that I should not pretend to be who I was not: That I should never join the bad gangs… That I should not emulate stupid behaviours… That I should be God-fearing… And struggle to do that which is right always. Trust me Sir, today it has paid off beyond my wildest dreams.

I assure you that if you remind yourself constantly of millions of Nigerians who are suffering as a result of bad leadership, you may be forced to do things differently. If you lead by example, you will be able to enforce discipline, combat corruption, and confront criminals with all the might at your disposal. Though you walk in the wilderness of the wicked, you shall not stumble. Most of the faces you see hovering around the corridor of power are bad people. Like vampires, they will devour everything in their wake. You must do everything to navigate away from them. Rather than allow the whales to swallow you like Jonah, you must swallow the whales. You may not wake up like Jonah if you choose to sleep in the belly of a whale.

As I noted in an earlier letter to you Sir, God must really love you. There is nothing more you want. Your good deeds will provide everything you and your family will ever need. As President of Nigeria, the prayers of the people will follow you for the rest of your life if you do that which is right always. The only way to reciprocate God’s kindness to you is to ensure that you don’t disappoint Him. You don’t have to steal a Kobo in your life. As a former President who’s loved by the people, you and yours will never lack anything. Not just that. You must avoid wasting the resources of the people on satisfying a few of your powerful friends when most of your fellow citizens wallow in abject poverty. There is no difference between stealing and wastage in the middle of untold hardship.   
The next issue you must tackle is the recklessness of our politicians who behave like they are our Lord and Saviour. Even if they were, we expect them to display the attributes of a quintessential Redeemer. But what we find are people in need of being redeemed from themselves and their reckless profligacy. I don’t know if you find time to watch television. You would have been surprised to see the motorcade of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, on her way from Buckingham Palace to attend dinner with President Barrack Obama in Regent’s Park recently. The world’s most influential monarch had a total of three vehicles and a few outriders on that journey. Sky News was allowed to beam a live coverage from its helicopter.

How come Nigerian officials are incapable of emulating such decent style of governance? We know of many private citizens in Nigeria who invade private functions with gun-toting bodyguards including members of the secret service. Government officials waste public funds on lining up a long fleet of cars when travelling with most of them empty. Even you Sir, your security agents block the land and the sky anytime you move out of the Presidential villa. It is so bad now that Lagosians pray that you don’t visit them as regularly as you do these days. The reason is simple: you disrupt their lives and activities completely each time you zoom in and shoot out. Your security operators should design more effective ways of protecting you and other men and women of power. You can’t imagine the incalculable damage such hyperbolic security cause the common man in terms of physical torture not to talk of the risk to lives when forced to hover endlessly in the sky.

In a country where we are being told the common man cannot earn N18,000 in a month, an equivalent of about $4 per day, it is unacceptable to see our leaders spoil themselves silly at public expense. How then do we hope to stamp out crime and corruption in the land? Most of our fellow citizens live below poverty line while most of our leaders live beyond the mark of luxury. This gap between the proletariat and the privilegentsia must be closed urgently before Nigeria slides into total anarchy. There is nowhere in the world that politicians live in such obscene splendour as they do in Nigeria. This is the reason attainment of power has become a matter of life and death. Power is being monopolised by a few even when there is no evidence of competence.

I believe you must inject life into the Education sector. What operates at present is disgraceful. As a matter of fact, you must declare a state of emergency on the sordid state of our academic institutions before the future of our youths is completely ruined. Nothing worries me more than the total decay in our schools from primary to tertiary. The foundation of every modern society is education. The problem we have is the politicisation of education. The huge budget we pump into the Ministry of education keeps ending in some pockets of malevolent politicians. And since their own children hardly school here, they can’t really be bothered about improving the odoriferous state of our institutions of learning. As a scholar yourself, I seriously think you will need to take more than a cursory interest in what happens to the future of our kids. There is no doubt that with better management of the current allocation, our education would improve drastically.

The next thing that is common to all is food. We must be able to produce more than enough for local consumption as well as for export. God has blessed us with most agricultural products and a most wonderful climate all year round but the discovery of oil has diverted our attention from what used to be our main cash cow. If I were in your shoes today, I will give priority to our unemployed graduates who show interest in agriculture. Most of the money being wasted on buying Presidential jets would provide jobs instantly for over 200,000 youths. We have the land and all that is required is to ask these graduates to make presentations to some panellists like we do in entrepreneur series on television. A grant of between N250,000 and N1million would meet the needs of most of the successful would-be farmers. This Agricultural Revolution can be achieved in no time.

I don’t know what you are currently doing in the area of housing but shelter is important to every living soul. One of the reasons Nigerians are attracted to corruption and crime is because of the difficulty of finding somewhere to lay their heads. The price and conditions of renting or owning a home in Nigeria are simply atrocious. It has turned many Nigerians into beggars in their own country. Our banks must be encouraged to operate a flexible credit system especially with those with secure jobs. A nation where everything is cash and carry can only breed unbridled criminals.

Mr President, you have the unenviable task of cleaning up our environment. Most cities in Nigeria appear too filthy for this time and age. The secret of Governor Babatunde Fashola in Lagos State it that he paid critical attention to cleaning up the streets of Lagos. You can replicate the same nationwide. You will obviously step on toes in the process but even your enemies will applaud you when you succeed. Health is wealth but a polluted environment is a grave danger to the lives of the people. I’m yet to recover from the agony I suffered from driving for four hours between Ibadan and Lagos last Saturday. As a friend put it succinctly, Nigerians definitely have in-built sedatives or how can we endure so much pain. I agree.

Mr President, everyone talks about the problem of power crisis in Nigeria which has apparently become a jinx but you can fix this problem if you are willing to step on the powerful toes of those who have made it impossible to have constant electricity in Nigeria. There is no problem that cannot be tackled. It all depends on how far you are willing to go.
God will help you Sir, if you help yourself, to succeed.

-ThisDay

Posted by admin on Jul 2 2011. Filed under Goodluck Jonathan (2010-present), Presidency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry