by Jude Ndukwe
Your Excellency Sir, I write to you as a grossly disadvantaged Nigerian especially as you have so declared from far away USA during your last visit there. Let me start by saying that the USA is not the right country where a sitting President should make such inflammatory, misguided, needless and discriminatory remark that conveys vengeance against his own people simply because of their democratic choice. This singular declaration which only confirms what many have already known about your avowed dislike for the people that make up the 5% in your statement was a deadly fly in the fine ointment of your well publicised visit to the United States of America, a country that strongly believes in the equality of all men and women irrespective of their race, tongue, class, political inclination or religious belief.
As a grossly disadvantaged Nigerian, having hailed from the South Eastern part of this great country myself, I write you with a bleeding heart knowing full well that the next four years would be a total waste for fellow Nigerians who hail from that region and our South South brothers except for anticipated God’s continued intervention. At least, this much we can deduce from your statement in reference. Since that infamous statement, our disadvantaged position has been elevated to an official level with alacrity.
One then wonders what will happen to those who christened you “Okechukwu” with fanfare during your visits to the “disadvantaged” land in the run up to the last elections? What happened to the memories the Isi Agu attire you wore with relish while you courted the people for votes? Did you bear the name “Okechukwu” and wore the attire with one part of your heart while the other reserved punishment for us? Or is it that the Rochas Okorochas, Ogbonnaya Onus and Chris Ngiges did not have good enough people to recommend to you as (Senior) Special Assistants or even (Acting DGs) since none from the disadvantaged states have been appointed by you so far? If not for divine intervention that made some legislators go on a needless errand to the International Conference Centre, Abuja, for a non-existent meeting, and were there till the electoral proceedings ended in the Senate, without knowledge of what was going on despite advancement in communication tools, Ike Ekweremadu would not have emerged Deputy Senate President. Your party was also strongly against the emergence of Godswill Akpabio as Minority Leader while your intervention in the leadership crisis of the House of Representatives saw that no one from the South East was a principal officer despite the Speaker’s more fairly proposal for the distribution of offices to all regions. Need we say more?
You have predicated your 97% vs 5% stance on the percentage of votes you received from the “disadvantaged” regions but history has shown that this is not the case as you have always given the people especially Ndigbo the harsh and vengeful treatment even when you occupied offices that did not require their votes. For example, even when you did not need anybody’s vote to be appointed the chairman of the defunct Petroleum (Special) Trust Fund (PTF), what did you do for these disadvantaged states? Did you fare any better then than you are doing today? Before I am persecuted for sounding ethnic, let me remind you of what one Wale Adedayo, a Yoruba from Ijebu Ife, wrote about you in Sahara Reporters on 13th of November, 2010, in the run up to the 2011 elections: “As PTF Chairman, you were an ethnic champion with the way projects under your supervision were executed. The Lagos/Ibadan Expressway, Shagamu/Benin Expressway and their Ibadan/Ilorin counterpart became death traps because you deliberately ignored these national arteries of commerce and social mobilisation due to a myopic vision of ‘punishing’ the Yoruba Nation for standing up to Abacha.
The restiveness in the Niger Delta region would have been contained a bit if the funds under your supervision as PTF Chairman were used effectively to put in place good infrastructure in the oil producing areas, where you got the money from. Instead, between 80% – 90% of PTF activities were concentrated in the Nort-West sub-region, which is your home area. And in the South-East, the deplorable state of the roads there is more than enough proof that the PTF under your watch was more interested in other places. You did nothing there.”
Kindly reflect on this and consider how you want Nigerians, even generations unborn, to remember you long after you have left this world. The time to do the right thing is now.
Do not give the 5% appointments simply because the constitution say so but endeavour to tap into their wealth of experience and entrepreneurship just like you would be expected to do to the other regions to make Nigeria better for all of us especially when the disadvantaged regions produce the bulk of the wealth you shall be using to develop the more fancied 97% regions. It is absolutely uncharitable of you to put the north in a state of odium before other regions for decades to come as a result of your actions or inactions. Remember, the whole of Nigeria, and not just a part of it, is your constituency once you assumed leadership of the country. How you are remembered after your presidency is entirely your choice!
Jude Ndukwe is a political analyst who lives and works in Abuja, Nigeria. He tweets from@stjudendukwe.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
