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Letter to her "Excellency" Turai Yar'adua

May 23, 2009

Our most distinguished First Lady, please permit me, with utmost humility, to congratulate  you for the special grace you enjoy to be blessed with such unusual favour by the Almighty. Your nuclear family has performed with distinction, through your most deft networking skills. Within this  family, a President has emerged with three first ladies in a short period of twenty four calendar months.  In a fertile Country with a populous 160 million people, your star shines with sparkle bright and broad all across the wide landscape of this planet. This indeed must be adequately appreciated and dutifully celebrated by your adoring compatriots from North to South in Nigeria and beyond.  We must thank God for this uncommon generousity.


I note with admiration, the way you have attended to the duties and assignments of the office of our President with unusual energy. Although I must add that some have also observed with consternation, what they call the usurpation of executive functions by the unusually skilled brains recruited into the office of the First Lady. This eagerness in support of your husband’s public duties has become a subject worthy of enlightened debates in University Common rooms as well as post match English Premiership Beer palour arguments across this Country.  We are all aware that you have been trying your best to fill some of those yawning gaps which you have identified as embarrassing to the Government your husband, our President  runs. Your recently proposed  6 billion Naira Cancer Centre to be launched very soon is one such area of attention. We sincerely hope however that you are doing this within the framework of the Health Policy of this Government in which an able and highly cerebral Professor  serves.  Bill Clinton once saddled his wife,  Hillary, with reforms in the Health Care department. The result was an unmitigated  disaster. Civil servants and establishment people hate family interference in public  duties.  This case requires even more clarification. Where does your Excellency plan to raise such  huge funds. I hope you can still remember the noise over President Obasanjo’s library.

I observe that like in the regime of President Ibrahim Babangida ably assisted by Her Excellency, Mrs. Mariam,   since your Husband came into office, women organizations and professional bodies have exploited your generous open door policy to show their support, pay their respect and make some requests through you from the Government which Mr. President runs.  Nigerians are complaining that this reminds them too of the lavish and vulgar BETTER LIFE DAYS OF MARIAM BABANGIDA and the BEIJIN CEREMONIES OF MARIAM ABACHA. I personally do not thing you need such flamboyant image at this time of National stagnation and World economic meltdown. Muslims are also complaining that some Muslim Ladies they see on Television being hosted by you are not properly dressed with appropriate head coverings and veils. I do not know much about the customs of Islamic dressing but I believe you should check out their complaints and address them immediately.

Again let me thank you on behalf of our citizens for the energy, the drive and the positive attitude to compliment Presidential efforts.  In my conversation with quite a number of our people , it has become very evident that your energy and commitment does not enjoy their appreciation.  Many have expressed  a desire to meet with you and speak boldly and frankly that you may need to shift attention from public functions and Televised ceremonies to the domestic front. They predicate this advice on the unusual burden that your entire family carries on behalf of this Country. Many  believe it is wrong, some think the self imposed yoke is unnecessary and quite a few complain  that it deprives many of  our Countrymen and women who desire to be engaged in public service some opportunity. They state quite emphatically that a family, whose breadwinner is engaged 24 hours in the day on behalf of the Country must not suffer the exploitation of his wife, our first Lady and two daughters, one suffering for Kebbi State as first Lady and carrying all the trauma and complaints of the women in that impoverished State, and the other carrying on the same bitter and nerve wrecking activities as First Lady in Bauchi State. This, they say is abnormal, unfair and undesirable. In one family alone, we have a President and three first Ladies laboring day and night in activities which the people are convinced other families should share.

They advice that as Matriarch of this family, you must immediately stop all Better Life activities , fold up your office and if those activities must be carried out, shift all the files to the office of Minister for Women Affairs. We need you on the home front to look after our leader and President. Our President needs all the attention that a comfortable home requires to enjoy and rest his tired system.  You must ensure through special attention and feeding, that he puts on weight immediately. This, your Excellency is a call to National service in an emergency. We need you to get the President up and running 100% and we believe that only those special dishes, FURA DI NUNU, those guinea fowl pepper soups that he enjoys and which only you can prepare the way he has become used to will do this magic.

I agree most reluctantly with those who depose that this Government has not been too good to people below the level of Aso Rock and the National Assembly. Aside the daily billions stolen from our people by Government and National Assembly big wigs, and the daily sad news that Mrs. Farida has caught these thieves and Mr. Aondoaka has freed them, the only other story we hear is that most of the International Agencies who cooperated with Ribadu in EFCC  and assisted our anti corruption efforts have fled threatening to stay away until Government shows sincerity. We hear they do not want to touch the EFCC anymore because the Attorney General has been writing some funny letters to free our money laundering criminals who fled justice and are now crowding around the villa. This has not resonated properly with the sound bites of anti corruption jingles on TV. We beg  you to stay at home and whisper to him just the right way you know how, that everybody is talking and laughing at Government for this attitude towards the battle against corruption.

Now this seven point agenda too must concern you as it does every citizen. Companies are relocating to Ghana because there is no electricity to drive their Machines.  Importers are shipping their goods through Benin Republic  because it takes our Customs three months and hefty bribe to clear a single container.  Fuel epilepsy has crippled virtually all forms of National activity and Mr. President’s budget when passed is never implemented. All we observe is that the money keeps disappearing between the Ministries and the National Assembly.

We humbly submit that there are two calendar years to go but really just one year outstanding for this administration. The last year being for political battles during which the Presidency experiences what is generally called the lame duck period. If you agree with me, Your Excellency, then you will see why your attention is needed urgently at home in the villa. Only you can engage in those power steering whispers in the ears of President Yar’ Adua. Conversations that will let him have a fair idea of what the people are saying about his Government and why it is even harzardous for him to think of a second term. But I believe hope is not lost if he can be persuaded to rest regularly to gain more strength, think constantly before making further promises, talk clearly about what he can still do in the remaining one year of his Government and deliver the goods convincingly for posterity to record some favourable sentences in his report card.

They see your daily two slots on NTA launching one programme, welcoming women pilgrims, meeting some women clubs, receiving the wives of some foreign ambassadors  and generally fixing one show stopping performance or the other as distracting to the image the President needs to cultivate for the respect of his office.  Your agility contrasts too sharply on Television with his slow speed, making him look weak. Your robust health and easy smile makes his looks and serious mien appear fearsome and unengaging.  They say that if Mitshele  were to carry on in similar manner that attempt to usurp the functions of Barak in any way, America would revolt against the Presidency immediately with the press calling the First Lady all kinds of names. Were she to carry out duties that upstages the President and makes him look weak, Barak would be looking for a new job, Sasha and Amelia would need a new school on their way back to Chicago. Congress would never fail to do what must be done to continue in the tradition that holds the President up as a symbol of strength and virility of the people of America.  We know your man may not be as strong and energetic as you are, but we believe that you must not make that too obvious by carrying out more Television appearances than the Head of State himself. Right now, many believe that your Excellency is running this Government. That is just not the right image for a Government to project

There is work to be done your Excellency. Your Compatriots believe that your work is at home, right there in the villa, mothering and counseling your life partner.

 
 

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