Okey Mr Tunde Bakare, even though I hold the view that 99.9% of your treatise last night was geared towards inviting hate towards Jonathan, to smear him before the general public and make his opponent gain mileage over him, let me still address my opinion to you since (1) at least, you ended up spending the .001% of your treatise in offering suggestion to how the nation can have peace (2) you were a member of the last National Conference; and (3) I am one Nigeria who restlessly crave for the peace of dear great nation, Nigeria. Sir, though I have equally given the same piece of advice to Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi through Thisday newspaper online platform, I am, all the more, offering you the same since I noticed a deafening silence over the gravamen of the matter in your last night speech. LETTER TO PASTOR TUNDE BAKARE Sir, addressing peace without first addressing the justice of the matter is not an honest way of addressing a problem. Pastor, Sir, pleases address the justice of the matter, first. For as Peter MacIntosh said, you must offer justice and equal rights before you can be taken seriously as wanting peace. Pastor, please, if yo do not know, may I respectfully let you know now what the matter really is: the North, Hausa/Fulani in particular, have ruled the nation for 39 years and the West (Yoruba) has ruled Nigeria for 11 years. But now a minority from the South/South, the self-same people whose resource (oil money) is the only reason for political contestation in Nigeria today is at the helm, some people from these two zones that have had their fair share have become restless and intolerant against the minority South/South zone. Their disdain and oppression of the South/South minority zone is so pronounced that, even in their party, they could not find any person, man or woman, from South/South worthy of either being their presidential candidate or much less, Vice Presidential candidate. Pastor, Sir, how can peace come out of this manifest injustice and intolerance by the two sections of the country against another ? Sir, I have no fixation on which man or woman from the South-South should be made President of Nigeria. In other words, I am saying, the South-South candidate could be any of these men that the anti-Jonathan, nay anti-South-South forces, have identified as credible and capable – Rotimi Amaechi, Adams Oshiomole or Timipriye Sylva. What I do not accept is the philosophy that says no man or woman of competence in today’s Nigeria can be found from that zone. It is gross injustice to take away the President they got by Providence and leave them with none whilst we expect and relish to run our country with the wealth from underneath their soil in peace. That will be to consign them to hewers of wood and fetchers of water for the rest of us and I am saying, Sir, that that is unjust in the sight of God and in the sight of any man or woman with conscience. Please, do away with Goodluck Jonathan if you will but only on the condition that another person from his zone should complete their (8) year tenure. Alternatively Sir, people like your good-self should call for and champion the immediate implementation of the decisions of the National Conference before anything else, if we are genuinely desirous of peace. We must enshrine in our Constitution “power rotation” within or amongst the 6 geo-political zones. I read from Thisday newspaper a few days ago that we lost territories to Boko Haram in Adamawa and Borno States on account of the disposition of some army officers and men who had ethnic and religious sympathy for the murderous organization. Pastor, I know, certainly, that if this fellows with other Nigerians in their realm of ideology know that if Jonathan dies, resigns or is impeached or is removed by any other means, his “brother” or “sister” from the South-South will complete his tenure, the incentive to sabotage his government and remove him at all cost will not be there. Let me remind you, Sir, that in a previous National Conference, Dr Alex Ekwueme advocated and canvassed vigourosly for this power rotation as a way of ensuring lasting peace in Nigeria; some delegates physically fought him for merely expressing that view, but surprisingly, Abacha adopted Power Rotation in his 1989 “Constitution.” But upon his death, another rigamarole Conference was called with the sole aim of yanking off power rotation; that done, they now gave us the 1999 Constitution that omitted Abacha’s power rotation principle. Many then thought that the aim of resisting rotation was to make the Yoruba “taste” power for only 4 years and thereafter, it would go to where “it was meant to be.” Of course, the man Obj was wiser; he outfoxed them all, for he set out weakening APP with juicy appointments to its officers, making PDP as the sole party for country and thereby effectively crippling an alternative platform to challenge his reign. That was how the Yoruba, through Obj, managed to complete their eight (8) year tenure. Pastor, So long as the Leadership question is based on the “domination principle,” we will never have peace. As another Jamaican, Robert Nester Marley, said until the philosophy that holds one group superior and the other inferior is destroyed, peace will be unattainable. Sir, we have gone to war on account of this, killing ourselves and drawing our dear great nation backwards, must we embark on another war before we could attend to this self-evident truth ? Pastor, Sir, you know more than I do that the first condition for peace is justice. I am all for the peace and longevity of our great nation Nigeria and that’s why I plead, Sir, that you address the justice of the matter, first.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 02:13:04 +0000
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