I have never slagged anyone off for not speaking the language of our colonial masters competently, but there is a reason why interpreters are an integral part of the diplomatic service. If you spoke through an interpreter you would save yourself and us a lot of unnecessary embarrassment. But that is still the least of your problems. I wish you would sometimes consider whether what you were about to say was worth saying before saying it. I wish you even had that capacity for reflection. Because I doubt you do. If you do, and I am wrong, the appeal I am about to make should find a listening ear. I did allude earlier on to my evaluation of you as the most important person in Nigeria. I make that assessment keeping in mind the absolute necessity of a proactive approach to leadership at any level. Your husband is temperamentally not the sort to grab a sword and slice through the Gordian knot. For good or for evil, you are. The trouble is, in you I see a lot of energy trapped within a psyche that has never been exposed to beneficial social or ethical training. I do not object to your theatrics, your tears or your tantrums. I just feel that they are misdirected. Instead of nursing an unwarranted grievance against the wife of Borno state governor, direct your diatribes at your husband’s head. Instead of making the Aso Rock press centre the platform for your insensitive bullying tactics, drag your husband by the ear into the presidential master bedroom and hit him around the head with some unpleasant home truths. Nigeria is burning madam. You are in a position to be our Esther. Let me play at being your Mordecai: Please tell your husband we elected Goodluck Jonathan to be president of Nigeria. We did not elect God, any of His GO’s, bishops or senior apostles. The buck stops at his table. We are sick of him pretending not to know that we look to him for guidance and leadership in this, our biggest crisis since the Civil War. We expect him to come out and rally all Nigerians across partisan, ethnic and sectarian lines against the enemies of mankind pretending to do the will of Allah. That includes all right-thinking Muslims. Perhaps his political wizards have convinced him that he only needs Christian votes to win the elections next year. It may well be, I don’t know. But I do know that unless a politician is an utterly useless human being, there must be some things on his priority list more important than the next election. The war against terrorism cannot be won by Christian southerners alone. The president should stop using church pulpits as campaign platforms and demonstrate that he understands the applicable distinctions between Boko haram, muslims, northerners and APC. The utterances of the CAN president of late have been very unhelpful, to put it mildly, and the president suffers from his perceived closeness to the CAN leadership. He can start by politely asking Pastor Oritsejafor to shut it, or publicly distance himself from the man and his words completely. We don’t need any more religious incitement than we already have in this country. Please tell your husband that he is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces and that a state of emergency has been declared in three north-eastern states. The unfortunate consequence as far is he is concerned is that he is the one saddled with the direct (let me repeat, direct) responsibility for ensuring the security of life and property within the zone of the emergency. Let me inform you madam, so far he has done a piss-poor job. Boko Haram has killed around 2, 000 this year alone and rendered half a million homeless. Last night alone, when you would think our security forces would be on red alert, Boko Haram has slaughtered at least 300 people in Gamburo Ngala. It is no use blaming the Borno state governor – he controls no troops. Your husband does. It is no use blaming APC for bombings without furnishing any proof. Your husband gets security reports. If he has any proof that any APC chieftain is sponsoring Boko Haram, let him publish the report and see what Nigerians would do to such a degenerate. Bottom line we are tired of all this buck-passing and politricking. We want action against terrorism and the ball is in your husband’s court. Please tell your husband that all the conflicting numbers given in the last three weeks have proved in relation to the missing girls is that our security and investigative capacity is a joke, a miserable joke. Do our police and security services not have a Standard Operating Procedure any time a crime is committed? Was the first priority not to gather all possible information about the criminals, the crime and the victims before going off half-cocked to state numbers they had to keep changing? Does our military not depend on accurate intel and logistics in order to mount effective military operations against the insurgents? If we had the most rudimentary mechanism for information sharing among our security services how could the army go on record to say it had rescued all our girls when it had rescued not a single one? You see now why I am convinced that your husband’s government was doing nothing all along? And why I am convinced that the war on terrorism cannot be won with such a rotten system? And guess who I am holding responsible for this state of affairs. Guess, madam. Please tell your husband that he is in the middle of an opportunity to become the greatest Nigerian ever. But he has to master the challenges facing us. If he protects the people of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa from their killers; if he demonstrates that their lives and safety means everything to him, they will show him their gratitude in ways that will shock him. Nigerians are like that. We are satisfied with very little, but it must amount to something. He must provide effective security, not the sham that sees the military go AWOL every time Boko Haram strikes, only to reappear and carry out reprisal attacks on innocent villagers in order to show they are ‘doing something’. In order to provide that security, he must as a matter of first priority conduct a complete overhaul of our security apparatus. It goes beyond sacking and replacing our service chiefs every six months. It extends to ensuring that across the board improvements in equipment, training, logistics, welfare and motivation are effected. It means your husband must change his attitude to constructive criticism. I well remember his reaction to the news report that exposed the hellish conditions at Nigeria Police College Ikeja. Rather than take the opportunity to roll some heads in the sand and stop the rot, your husband was more concerned with finding out who allowed the media such an opportunity to ‘embarrass the government.’ It seems your husband is easily embarrassed. The trouble is, he is not proactive at eliminating potential sources of embarrassment before they occur. And his unwillingness to deal with the corruption stinking under his nose right in his cabinet makes us doubtful if he is the sort to take the decisive action to make our military fit for purpose. We are observing. Please tell your husband that he is free to ignore this message, as indeed every message from well-meaning Nigerians calling on him to man up and stop eyeing 2015 so hungrily to the detriment of the demands of 2014. But remember this; there is no guarantee that Nigeria as we know it will still exist by this time next year if things continue as they are. It may shock him, but his personal welfare is tied to the destiny of Nigeria, for good or for evil. Your friends in the political class may spend the next few months bartering oil blocks, scamming subsidy payments, bilking our banking system and carrying on as if all is well in Nigeria. Not one of them will lift a finger to save you if a reckoning should come, and the way you are carrying on, all bets are off. Marie Antoinette told starving Parisian women who asked for bread to go and eat cake. You just virtually told the crying women of Chibok to go and eat shit. There are some cries that go directly to the throne of God. You’ve just threatened to go spiritual, so I am sure you understand me. You know your husband better than any of us madam, so you know the secret codes that unlock his heart, soul and imagination. If he has any iota of compassion for the people of Nigeria in his heart, you are in the best position to reach in and tap into that vein of empathy. If your husband can be activated to act like a president, you are the best person to do the activating. The time to make the effort is now, madam, not tomorrow. Our enemies have already planned what they will do to us tomorrow. For all you know the target may be Aso Rock itself. Exactly. Please accept the sincerest expressions of my highest estimation. Peter Oshun Esq.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 06:45:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015