Mr. President, I love you, and I pray for you to succeed, hence I chose to tell you these inconvenient truths. I know you will be reading this opinion or somehow you will get to be told about what I have written.
Don’t think you have lost me as a friend and supporter but count on me as someone with a renewed hope that you still can make a better president. You have good intentions no doubt, but there are times when good intentions are not just enough. Actions speak better than intentions.
I recall when this democracy was still nascent and you were elected the executive governor of Lagos State on January 9, 1999. A position you held up to 2007.
On these two elections, I campaigned for you and I voted for you. More fascinating was that I listened through your inaugural speech on May 29, 1999 where you laid the foundation of a new Lagos.
Also, in that well-crafted speech, you paid glowing tributes to the heroes of the struggle for democracy, particularly the men and women of the press whom you admitted suffered arbitrary detention, harassment and death so that we can have this democracy. I was a witness to the transformation of Lagos from the dream of one man to reality.
I followed how you chose successors from among your disciples and how each of them from Babatunde Fashola to Babajide Sanwo-Olu kept faith with the vision.
For 24 years, you plotted your way to the top and it finally paid off when you were sworn in as President on May 29, 2023 But the inconvenient truth is that as president, you are now a sharp contrast from the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu that I admired as the governor of Lagos State.
Maybe it is age that has changed you or some flip flop in policy ideas, but it is inexcusable that under your watch as President, free speech which is essential in democracy is fast fading.
You may have forgotten so quickly that censorship, threats and intimidation are not tools of democracy. These days, journalists are harassed, threatened with treason or made to disappear.
Despotic governors are learning this game from you. Bandits are free to use phones without NIN linkage, use Tik Tok and Facebook to display their torture of their victims, express their extreme ideologies and display the ransoms they collected, but Nigerians should speak in fear and muffled tones about their sufferings.
The inconvenient truth is that if the government continues to muscle free speech, censor the media and dismiss public opinions, at some point, the people’s anger might explode in a way that the falcon will no longer listen to the falconer. Take the advice of the patriots on constitutional review seriously.
You lose nothing allowing the conversation to commence. It is still better to jaw-jaw than to war-war! People are sick, hungry and suffering due to your monumental failed policies, and palliative is no longer the answer. Nigerians who voted for you are disappointed in you.
I personally feel very ashamed when people compare you with former President Muhammadu Buhari and conclude they were better off under Buhari who by all indications was an unmitigated disaster. Buhari is a nightmare that is better forgotten and I refuse the temptation to regret his exit.
Asiwaju, I pray that Buhari will never be better than you, and you must do all within your power to heal the wounds of this country. Due to hunger and bad governance, some youths went to the street in protest.
In your younger days and if you were not the president, you would have been the leader of that protest because you are a man of the people.
Those young men and women who came out to protest had no intention of overthrowing your government but to be heard so that you will take actions against some vested interest holding the country down. Those kids were the examples of the young men and women you praised to high heavens in the speech you delivered on May 29, 1999.
The high handedness of security agencies who murdered about 40 protesters and now proffering charges of treason against those arrested is unjustifiable and inconsistent with your persona as democratic activist. Do something different if you wish, invite those young men and women from detention
In Zamfara State for instance, the chief of the bandits Mr. Turgi and his well armed militia determine your life. They make Tik Tok of their rape, torture and execution of their victims
to break-fast or dinner, have a conversation with them and let them go. Discontinue with the needless trial because convicting any of them and sentencing one person to death on a trumped-up charge of treason will dent you and put you in the infamous class of African dictators.
Posterity will never forgive you. If there are people Nigerians want dead, it is the politicians looting Nigerians in billions of naira and dollars.
It is the cabals stealing our oil, gold and diamonds. It is those fat cows that have become bigger than our constitution. The people we want dead are those that are now thrilled by banditry visiting peasant villagers with horror and violence.
People have not forgotten how your predecessor responded to this raw-violence with partisanship. In Zamfara State for instance, the chief of the bandits Mr. Turgi and his well-armed militia determine your life. They make Tik Tok of their rape, torture and execution of their victims.
The horror of their operations is now blunted by numbers too large to comprehend, actions repeated until their meaning wore thin.
In many instances, they invaded villages and ordered people out of their homes, and began beating them, and some became permanently disabled as a result. In some cases they ordered some young men to dig their graves, lined them up and began shooting them.
They take women who they rape and keep as hostages. There was this story of two young girls who were pregnant having been raped by bandits who invaded their village previously. This time the bandits shot and killed them.
Then they pressed the bayonets into their rounded bellies and cut the girls open to expose the fetuses still moving in their stomachs. Those were young Christian girls.
They did nothing but be Nigerians. The killing, persecution and displacement of Christians in Northern Nigeria is unrelenting and a time bomb.
We should be ashamed that we have a country where Christians are deliberately targeted, as well as their communities, their livelihood, faith leaders and places of worship.
It is a shame that under your watch Christians are reportedly becoming endangered species. When the gunmen attack and slaughter people, they could be heard shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (Allah is the greatest).
It is inexcusable that foreign militias have infiltrated our country and killed our people and you offer no protection to our own citizens. For heaven’s sake, Mr. President, you are the Commander-in-Chief, and you have all the power to put a full final stop to this whole nonsense.
To every reasonable mind, you and the present political class have failed our people and abused the true meaning of democracy as government of the people, by the people for the people.
While most Nigerians cannot afford a loaf of bread, you have the president’s men living in opulence. You have the president jetting around in a high-class private jet.
Amidst poor economic conditions, food shortages and limited access to health care, your recent purchase of Airbus A330 Presidential Jet at N150 billion is a misplaced priority. It shows how insensitive you are to the plight of Nigerians. What you have done is like fleecing the people.
How do you rationalize the recent order by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission issuing one-month ultimatum to traders to crash food prices and on the other hand NNPC Ltd which is under you as Minister of Petroleum Resources hiked fuel price to almost N1000 per litre?
Transportation is a major component in determining food prices because the farmers need to transport their products to the market. The increase in fuel price increases the cost of transportation which invariably increases food prices.
This is economics of common sense. Why are you doing this to yourself and to us? I cannot believe that you used 24 years to plot to become president and now this?
Mr. President, why will NNPC Ltd have exclusive rights to buy Dangote’s petrol. There are other importers that can buy from Dangote. What Nigerians want is fair pricing and not price manipulation or monopoly. I pray that failure will not be your portion.
