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. Yet again on
Monday 28th December, in Adamawa state, Boko Haram launched a series of
suicide bomb attacks in which at least fifty innocent civilians were
killed. 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.
“.
