Mr.
President, as one of your most loyal and faithful subjects who has
nothing but the utmost respect for your person and your office I am
constrained to write you this open letter. This is because there are a
number of issues that I believe that it is important for you to clarify
and to come clean on. I say this because some of your assertions of late
are at best contradictory and at worst patently dishonest.
Whichever
side of the political divide we are on I believe that we can all agree
on one thing: that the prosecution of the war against terror is not
something that any of us should play politics with. This is especially
so given the fact that human lives are at stake and the very existence
of our nation is under threat. Like much of the rest of the world our
country is going through hell at the hands of the jihadists and Islamist
terrorists.
There
is no gainsaying that we must all come to terms with the fact that the
Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL), Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Al Shabab,
Boko Haram, Hamas and another group that the internationally-respected
Global Terror Index has described as the ''Fulani militants'' (aka
Fulani herdsmen) are nothing but bloodthirsty murderers and the lowest
form of life. They are indeed the scum of the earth, the troublers of
humanity and the vermin of hell. It is with this in mind that I urge you
to take the war against terror far more seriously than you are doing
and plead with you to stop passing the buck.
Your
penchant for blaming your failings in this regard on the previous
administration is simply nauseating and it does not serve you well. You
continuously contradict yourself when it comes to this matter and
frankly such flip flops are unworthy of the office that you presently
occupy. We your subjects look up to you for consistency, strength,
unequivocal commitment, a firm resolve and the ''leadership from the
front'' that you promised during your presidential campaign in this war.
We do not want and neither do we need doublespeak, lame excuses and
buck passing.
Permit
me to point out a few examples of your contradictory assertions and
your buck passing in this short intervention. Initially you claimed that
your predecessor in office President Goodluck Jonathan never bought any
arms and that instead he squandered and stole all the money that was
appropriated for the procurement of arms.
Yet
when the British Minister of Defense visited you in the Presidential
Villa the other day the story changed. You did a U-turn and gleefully
told him and the wider world that President Jonathan bought arms with
raw cash.
One
wonders which story you shall come up with next and which one you will
conjure up in the future. Kindly tell us what the position is: is it
that Jonathan did not buy arms at all and stole all the money or is it
that he used cash to buy arms? You cannot have it both ways. It is
either one or the other.
Quite
apart from your glaring doublespeak on this matter there was another
issue which you ought to have raised with your highly esteemed and
respected British guest. You forgot to tell him that his was one of the
countries that not only refused to sell weapons to us during the course
of this bitter conflict but that also helped to impose and enforce the
international arms embargo on our country even though we are at war.
This
resulted in the unnecessary death of thousands of our people because we
found it difficult to procure the weapons to protect them. Your guest’s
country insisted on towing the American line and doing this to us even
though we were fighting a war against a relentless, well-motivated,
well-funded and well-armed fighting force that Global Terror Index has
described as the ''deadliest terrorist organization in the world''. One
is forced to ask: with friends like this who needs enemies?
Given
the fact that the embargo was in place one wonders how we were supposed
to procure arms unless we did so with raw cash on the black market. The
alternative was to buy none at all, to do nothing and to allow Boko
Haram to take Abuja, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Lagos. Perhaps that is
precisely what your western friends and allies wanted but thankfully it
never came to pass.
Despite
the challenges and constraints President Jonathan faced, instead of
losing any more ground, he rose to the occasion and retook no less than
22 local government areas and virtually pushed Boko Haram out of
Nigeria. The only place that they occupied by the time the election took
place was Sambisa forest.
Jonathan
achieved all this with those arms that he bought with raw cash. This is
apparently what you are now complaining about. Permit me to remind you
that it is those same arms that Jonathan bought with raw cash that your
army is still using till today. Yet sadly since you were sworn in as
President seven months ago you have lost some of those same local
government areas that were earlier recovered and they are now back in
the hands of the terrorists.
Despite
this you keep telling the international community and the Nigerian
people that we are ''making progress'' in the war against terror. As a
matter of fact you went as far as to say that we had ''won the war''
against Boko Haram and your Minister of Information, Mr. Lai Mohammed,
echoed that grotesque mendacity and reiterated that sentiment by adding
the words ''technically won'' (whatever that may mean) to the equation.
Sadly,
two days later, on Christmas day, in what can only be described as an
eloquent response from the terrorists, scores of innocent civilians were
killed by Boko Haram in Borno state and a whole community was burnt to
the ground. Again on Sunday 27th of December Maiduguri, the capital of
Borno state, came under heavy attack from the terrorists. So much for
having ''won the war against Boko Haram'', whether ''technically'' or
otherwise.
Instead
of conceding that you had told the Nigerian people a pernicious lie,
curiously the next thing that you did was to tell them that you would
''persuade Boko Haram to drop their arms''. One is compelled to ask: why
would you have to persuade them to drop their arms if you had already
defeated them and won the war against them?
In
any case this would be the first time in the history of modern warfare
that a sitting President has sought to destroy and defeat a vicious and
relentless terrorist organization and win the war against terror simply
with the awesome and devastating weapon of persuasion. Perhaps you
should recommend that same tactic to the Americans and the rest of the
international community as an effective and credible weapon to adopt in
their war against ISIL, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, Hamas and all the other
jihadist groups that plague the world.
Whilst
you are at it perhaps you could also persuade Boko Haram to free the
Chibok girls. It is disturbing to note that despite all your campaign
promises and assurances that once you are elected President the girls
would be rescued or returned, nothing has been done or heard about any
of them ever since you were sworn in. Worst still the Bring Back Our
Girls Group, which was essentially an appendage of your election
organization, together with its distinguished leaders and conveners,
appear to have gone very quiet. I guess they are busy trying to persuade
Boko Haram to drop their arms too.
The
truth is that it is time for you to free yourself from your monumental
delusions and to get real. Sadly you appear to be detached from reality.
Instead of fighting the war against terror you are making it worse by
slaughtering one thousand Shia Muslims in Zaria on December 12th,
locking up their leader Sheik Ibrahim El Zakzaky and opening yet another
war front in our country. The last thing that we need is for Hezbollah
or the Iranian Republican Guard to rise to the occasion, take up the
challenge, jump into the fray and decide to protect and avenge their
Shia Muslim brothers and sisters in northern Nigeria.
Yet
despite the reprehensible and indefensible actions of your military
commanders in Zaria you have refused to show any remorse for what was
undoubtedly a war crime against fellow Nigerians and you have not
prosecuted the officers and military personnel that were involved in the
butchery. Instead the homes of the victims and those that share their
Shia faith have been burnt to the ground in Zaria and their graves and
burial sites have been dug up and desecrated.
Instead
of fighting Boko Haram you are fighting and killing your own people.
Worse still you have refused to defend our country. I say this because a
few days ago the Cameroonian military invaded our country, violated our
territorial integrity and savagely murdered over 70 innocent Nigerians
in their village before burning it down.
Your
government refused to acknowledge that this event even took place,
despite the media reports. You did not console or express condolences to
the families of the victims or retaliate against the Cameroonians.
You
did not even warn them or demand an apology or reparations from them.
This is heartless and shameful. It could not have happened under
Jonathan, Obasanjo, Babangida, Shagari, Abacha, Abubakar, Shonekan,
Mohammed, Balewa or indeed any other former Nigerian President or Head
of State. If any of them had been in power and the Cameroonians
cultivated the effrontery to do such a thing there would have been
consequences.
Yet
you did nothing to avenge this affront or to defend our honor. What
happened to the gallant and brave General Buhari that courageously led
our troops into victory in Chad in the early 1980's? What happened to
the honest and forthright man that we all admired and looked up to
because of his military exploits in Chad? What happened to the war hero
that gave the Chadians a ''bloody nose'' for daring to attack a Nigerian
village and that almost took Ndjamena, the Chadian capital? What
happened to the man that proved to the Libyans and their Chadian proxies
that Nigerians knew how to fight? It appears that you have changed and
that you are no longer the man that you used to be.
Instead
of being honest with our people you have insisted on selling them a
dummy and telling them a lie. You refuse to tell the world that our
military is terribly demoralized, our soldiers are suffering heavy
casualties and are not being paid their salaries regularly and, worse of
all, that you have failed to procure a single bullet or weapon for them
to use in the last seven months since you came to power.
Instead
of deploying all the power of the state against Boko Haram you have
spent all your energy and resources trying to teach the former National
Security Advisor, Colonel Sambo Dasuki, and all your other perceived
enemies the lesson of their lives by misrepresenting them before the
world, subjecting them to state-sponsored tyranny and the most insidious
form of persecution, violating their human rights and lying to the
world that they stole and shared money that was meant for the purchase
of arms.
You
have also misled and misinformed the Nigerian people about the rules
and conventions that are applied when it comes to the administration of
security funds and about the fact that it is the National Assembly alone
that has the right to probe the use of such funds as part of their
oversight functions. To cap it all you have claimed you did not receive
any benefit from the NSA 's office whilst Jonathan was in power. This is
an assertion which we all know is, at best, questionable.
You
must be mindful of the fact that God hates liars and He despises those
that abuse power. You must remember that the more you scorn God's
counsel and mock His admonitions the more your errors will be made
manifest and the more your people will suffer.
You
must understand that any leader or government that is motivated by
bitterness, fear, hate, vengeance and malice will eventually hit the
rocks and crash like a pack of cards. You must appreciate the fact that
God is watching and that He sees and knows all.
May the Lord have mercy on you and may He forgive you for your many sins and wicked ways. God bless Nigeria.
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