An Open Letter To President Olusegun Obasanjo And Nigerians

by Yahaya Balogun

Dear Sir,

Your open letter to president Goodluck Jonathan few days ago, going viral on the internet and the media engendered the writing of this missive to you. He who comes to equity must come with clean hands. Every time you mount a podium to sermon us the ills of another political leaders or ‘Militaricians’ like you, it tries to becloud us and further traumatizes our collective memory and sense of history. The present Jonathan’s administration is a product of your conscription to our polity.

This writer is a privileged citizen of the United States of America and a bona fide ‘son of the soil’ of the federal republic of Nigeria. He is interlocked with loyalty to both countries. He is very passionate about America because he is adequately protected with the constitution. He is also groused with Nigerian leadership because his counterparts in Nigeria suffer in the midst of plenty. Why do the world adore American exceptionalism? Because their forefathers did not labor in vain as their leaders past and present respect the constitution and relentlessly continue to create egalitarian society for present and future generation. Sir, try and study the constitution of United States, it is a sacred document as good as the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria. American constitution is sacrosanct to American leadership, to Nigerian leaders, Nigerian constitution is grossly abused and made a prostrate document that is daily rendered impotent as a mere piece of paper it is written. Political position should not be a means to an end but an end to itself, as there is always life after the mantle of leadership.

Mandela was 100% correct about Nigeria in one of his interviews of our sorry situation in Nigeria. Our leaders have no modicum of shame in them. They are shedding Crocodile tears now crying profusely with hypocrisy more than the bereaved families of Madiba in South Africa. What a great exposition by Mandela on Nigerians and their leaders!! Nigeria leadership is embellished with fraud. Nelson Mandela is indeed antithesis of you, Babangida and other mindless politicians in Nigeria.

You were reportedly to have visited Mandela in prison and championed the release of the man while you were Military Heads of State of Nigeria. You squandered those heroic gestures. How many Universities or Farmland did Mandela established or acquired with the state ill-gotten money? Again, you wasted a lifetime opportunities. You are a man everyone would have been celebrating by now as providence was unkind to you as a result of your selfish and leadership style. I literally weep for Nigeria. Of what use is for you to have ephemerality of life and still die unsung? Mandela’s demise as a kindred spirit is an eye opener for not only you and your cronies but to all of us that this world is void with nothingness. Humanity should not loose hope as we are witnessing another Mandela in the personae of POPE FRANCIS (TIME MAGAZINE person of the year), MALALA AND AUN SAN SUU KYI and other courageous personalities we are yet to know. They all espouse the qualities of Nelson Mandela and striving hard to create egalitarian society for mankind.

I read on this medium that one wired Scholar was communicating with well-informed or ill-informed Nigerians? A purported paid agent and a Cambridge University scholar of African History trying to re-write history by ditching out your pseudo-achievements. I dare say to you and him (the scholar from Cambridge) to tell his thesis or his inaugural lecture of your “achievements” to the ordinary man on the street of Ibadan or Kuje or Ekiti; or the families of those that were massacre in Odi by your command; or Ikeja bomb blast victims whom you told in time of their trauma that you were not supposed to be there; or revered and Clergy men of those good old-days of good-religious values you disgraced in the full glare of public; or the family of MKO Abiola and Nigerians who were betrayed by you for your collaboration with your cronies to annul the most free and fair elections in the nation’s history; or his supports for most African dictators; or trillions of Dollars of Abacha loots still yet to be accounted for by OBJism.

Is high time people stopped these highfalutins being embellished with husky pretensions. What a gross deceitful exposition by your Scholar.!!! The only thing that is constant in life is change. Posterity is on the side of those who selflessly strife as leaders to create egalitarian society for all without grandstanding ( yours, with your letter to President Jonathan is Grandstanding instead of Understanding the plights of your people and apologise for past misdeeds). Nelson Mandela we all celebrate today is indeed antithesis of Olusegun Obasanjo and our leaders in a beautiful and castrated country. You wasted a lifetime opportunities because of selfishness and grotesque of attention seeking.

You, Babangida, Shonekan, Abacha and Jonathan are children of circumstances. Providence gave you mantles of leadership and you all squandered it. I still say it. Every single day in the lives of a WIDOW WOMAN from Edo State and other deprived Nigerians gives me concern about Nigeria. As beautiful as other nations are organized, Africa is still the threshold of history and Africans must liberate themselves from self-colonialism. We suppose to be swimming in the euphoria of prosperity and tranquility but leaders..!.leaders..!! leaders…!!! of African countries have failed us woefully. I thought Africans would wake up and reflect sincerely on the election of Barack Hussain Obama of the United States!! But NO. What did you see ? Hypothesis of hypocrisy, deceits and warped minds and other idiosyncratic maladies that dotted the nomenclatures and minds of the citizens. A microcosm of our nuts and mental decadence are comments of some people you read daily on Facebook and other social media. Obama once hailed and adored is now their enemy just because he speaks truths to their conscience.

Mandela they hypocritically eulogize today was densely critiqued by the same species of human beings. Because our minds in that part of the world are intertwined with religiosity, an opium that leaders are using as tools to distracting and destroying Nigeria and African countries today! Nigeria is a bad example of a father to other african countries. When entity of a giant is rotten, those following it will do same. Mandela was genuinely with love and instinctually unhappy with our complacency and our religious and political leaders’ hedonism. Every street of Nigeria is painted by our leaders with megalomania and religiosity yet our citizens continue to wallow in misery, abject poverty and other ills of the society. It’s a shame.

To Nigerians, Mark Zuckerberg helped us without paying any dime with the advent of Facebook, instead of us to form majority coalition and mobilize the populace, we are busy using religion and ethnic jingoism as wedge to divide ourselves, all because of our warped minds as a result of long misrules by successive governments of Nigeria. Arise O Compatriots!!! ….wake up and denounce our selfishness to build a country to be proud of by the next generation. We cannot continue like this…..!!! O Dear Obasanjo, there is Jonathan in all of you. I bet you still have great opportunity to right the wrong by apologizing to all Nigerians who have been abysmally affected by your rules. Maybe, maybe Mandela’s demise has woken you up and all of you who have committed religious, economic and political crimes against Nigeria. Time will tell…..!!!

May God give you and your partners the courage to right the wrongs of the past and shape for good the future of present generation and the ones yet unborn.

God bless you, God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

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