by Dele Momodu
Fellow Nigerians, how do I thank you for the deluge of messages I
received from you over the letter I wrote last week to our dear
President, Dr Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, on this page titled My
Kobo Advice for Mr President. On Twitter, Facebook, countless blogs,
sms, emails and telephone calls, comments poured in torrents and I was
particularly touched by your kind prayers for me and my family. There
were a few people who confessed to hating me with a passion prior to
last week but God, in His infinite mercy, melted their hearts through
the innocuous letter I wrote from Cambridge University, England, United
Kingdom.
The most dramatic response I received came from the former Managing
Director of Daily Times, Chief Tola Adeniyi (aka Abba Saheed) who not
only sent me a text message but also wrote me a beautiful email: “
…This letter has been circulated round the world…it was forwarded to me
by 11 different contacts.”
Even as I write this, tweeps are unrelenting, as they continue to
tweet the letter on Twitter. The ubiquitous Google is awash with links
to all manner of blogs I never knew existed. For the first time since I
started writing articles some 30 years ago, Nigerians are united in
loving a message and its messenger. It is indeed a rare honour and
privilege and I’m very grateful to you all.
Many have asked what inspired such a superlative letter and the only
reason I can find is that I wrote my column at Cambridge University, an
institution that’s generally rated as number one in academics and the
fourth oldest surviving higher citadel in the world. The historic
university is one of the richest in the world with an endowment of about
£4.3billion, over N1 trillion which we are burning entirely on a
phantom fuel subsidy in Nigeria. The university has about 114 libraries
which collectively hold over 12 million books. Each faculty has its own
library stocking between 30,000 to 200,000 volumes. Over 100,000 new
books are added every year and in the year 2000, the famous Bill Gates
donated $210 million for foreignpost-graduate students of the school.
The stupendous investments in intellectual work and research have
paid off handsomely. The University of Cambridge has given mankind some
of the brightest human beings since it was founded about 1209 AD. They
include Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell,
Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, John Fletcher, E. M Forster and
others. It has produced about 65 Nobel laureates, more than any other
university in the world. Its alumni include 15 Prime Ministers, 23 heads
of government, Lords and Royals. Prince Charles was its distinguished
student.
This was the historic place I found myself last week and took the
chance to craft what has almost become my magnus opus. Obviously, your
environment determines how you reason. No one would believe I wrote over
a thousand words of that letter under one hour. There must be some
benevolent spirits flying all over the place that inspires anyone
serious enough, to open his heart to imbibe knowledge and ideas. I thank
God for the rare opportunity and pray that my children would be
admitted to such universities one day soon.
After spending two nights in what I prefer to call the English
forest, I was forced to take a deeper look at the intractable problems
of our troublesome country. My mind did some mental somersaults from the
beginning of my journey as a perpetual agitator since 1978 in Ile-Ife.
We had lived precariously on the hope of a better Nigeria but with every
new government acting worse than its predecessor. From my first ever
trip to England in 1985, the naira has taken a cataclysmic dive from a
rate of N1 to $1 to its present rate of N160 to $1. The cost of a ticket
since then has jumped through the roof from N580 to nearly N200,000 or
even over.
We have managed to meander from one crisis to another. In 1993, we
had a glimmer of hope when Nigerians united to vote for two Muslims,
Alhaji Moshood Abiola and Alhaji Babagana Kingibe but our joy was cut
short by the military. We went on rampage to demand the revalidation of
Nigeria’s most beautiful election result which had been annulled but
some of us ended up where we did not expect. The result was a full blown
dictatorship that left Nigerians lingering in pains and pangs of
regret.
After the suspicious deaths of General Sani Abacha and Chief Abiola,
Nigerians thought there was hope again to pick up our dilapidated and
depleted nation. They reposed their faith in a retired Army General,
Chief Olusegun Matthew Aremu Okikiolakan Obasanjo as opposed to a
cerebral banker and economist, Chief Olu Falae, in 1999. That was when I
discovered that many Nigerians often fall readily for abracadabra. The
People’s Democratic Party which they concocted was as conservative as
they come being an offspring of Shagari’s National Party of Nigeria and
General Ibrahim Babangida’s National Republican Congress. Yet the same
people who voted overwhelmingly for the progressive Social Democratic
Party that fielded Abiola were the same voters who, for reasons best
known to them, embraced PDP. The lack of ideology or principle is the
bane of Nigerian politics.
It is virtually, sometimes, impossible to distinguish between the
parties. When it comes to matters of personal interests, our politicians
would waste no time in sleeping and facing the same direction. None is
ever bold to challenge the status quo or risk his comfort zone. If the
leaders are bad and irresponsible, majority of their rabid supporters
are worse, ignorant and confused. For crumbs, they are ready to trade
words and fisticuffs with whosoever has the audacity to criticise their
tin gods. The loudest fanatics are often the biggest sufferers in our
society. They have been so pummelled and pauperised that they’ve given
up on their lives and would volunteer to help give up on yours.
Nigeria has never been short of good candidates but many of us won’t
recognise them when we see them due to the primordial sentiments that
rule our lives. A ruling government that had the likes of Donald Duke,
Oby Ezekwesili, Nasir el-Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu, Dora Akunyili, Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, and others could not field them as candidates when the
presidential palace was going to be vacant. On the part of the
opposition, we could not rally round Nigeria’s greatest radical Gani
Fawehinmi, but we all went to shed buckets of crocodile tears when he
died. The great Femi Falana could not become a Governor in Ekiti state
where Peter Fayose was the king. Nigeria is indeed a paradox, a place
the poor pretends to hate the rich but actually hates the poor more.
The usual excuse is that a good politician must join the big
political party if he must win the election. It does not matter to them
how retrogressive the party is. It must parade bigwigs who are capable
of intimidating the lumpen proletariat who seem not to feel any pain
after too many years of being in the sun and under the rain. The next
theory is that a good candidate must be experienced in politics. They
usually forget to examine the outcome of the experience of failure on
the part of their geriatric leaders.
There are also those who advocate revolution as the veritable
solution to our difficulties as a nation. They will tell you that all
our leaders must be killed but no one remembers to propose the
yardsticks. On closer examination it is predicated on the theory that
every poor man sees the rich man as the source of his woes and misery.
That’s why President Jerry Rawlings once told us in an interview that a
revolution is a mob action. There are those who wish for the breakup of
Nigeria. They are the ones I find most laughable and objectionable. Why
should we dismember our nation because of a few lazy bums who can’t
compete freely in a one Nigeria? Life is a permanent struggle and
there’s nothing wrong with our endless regional battles.
I have friends from the old Yugoslavia who bemoan the collapse of
their once powerful country till this day. Russia has become less
influential after the demise of the Soviet Union. The irritants who hate
Nigeria should be told that the problem of Nigeria is the fact that the
nation has been hijacked by a few people for profit. The rest of us are
able to live in peace and harmony but not those few leaders whose only
claim to relevance is where they come from. Until we de-emphasise those
things that divide us, we can’t make progress.
Those calling for war have not seen its terrible effect. I have seen a
bit of that in Sierra Leone and Liberia. I was too young during the
Nigerian civil war but felt its reverberations even hundreds of miles
away. At the end of the day, the warriors were forced to dialogue after
wasting over three million lives. Is that what we want again? I doubt if
most Nigerians would answer in the affirmative.
All we need is to find a way to get our leaders to do something
because whatever they think they are doing now amounts to nothing. My
letter was to encourage President Jonathan not to join the failed
leaders. It was my innocent appeal to his conscience. He needs to resist
the allure of power and return to a life of humility. Many have warned
me I was engaged on a mission impossible. That the President was in
power to mark time, enjoy his quota and return home like others before
him. Regretably the President behaves as if there is force in their
views. The whole of Lagos was shut down last night because the
President was going to worship at the RCCG Camp. That was most
unfortunate. There were people travelling for weddings who could not
move almost all day.
It is my hope that God can still rescue this nation, provide us with a
People’s Leader and put the doomsday prophets to shame. Nigeria is
blessed, not cursed. We are a pious nation but our religious leaders
must remember that they pray in vain for our country if the leaders they
pray for continue to possess hearts of stone!
YNaija.com
