Dear Sir: Good day, Sir. I am quite aware that you have a busy schedule, so I will be brief. Being an Information Minister is no bread and tea job, not to talk of being the mouth-piece of the government of the most populous nation of black people and working for a boss who hardly does any talking himself, and the few times he does, his meaning and message is lost in the attendant incoherence. So yours is a serious job, one I do not envy, but I trust you will always find a way around whatever difficulties therein, not if you call to bear the same zeal with which you led UNIJOS students to protest removal of fuel subsidy in 1988 while you were SUG President and then turned around to support same in 2011.
Dear Sir: Good day, Sir. I am quite aware that you have a busy schedule, so I will be brief. Being an Information Minister is no bread and tea job, not to talk of being the mouth-piece of the government of the most populous nation of black people and working for a boss who hardly does any talking himself, and the few times he does, his meaning and message is lost in the attendant incoherence. So yours is a serious job, one I do not envy, but I trust you will always find a way around whatever difficulties therein, not if you call to bear the same zeal with which you led UNIJOS students to protest removal of fuel subsidy in 1988 while you were SUG President and then turned around to support same in 2011.
So many people have criticized you for this. I even heard that they sent you hate messages. Not me! Why would I blame you? As a student unionist, you might not have had all the facts, but now that you are in government you have suddenly seen the sense in it all. They said in 1988 that you claimed that the removal of fuel subsidy was a crime against the Nigerian masses. What right have these people to dig out your comments after all, words are said everyday in Nigeria without holding their owners accountable. So why make you an exception. In 1988, you were just a student, probably living on his parents and we all know that subsidy would sure have affected your parents and as a result how much they doled out to you, but now you are a minister, spoon-fed and probably clothed from the commonwealth. Your children need not bother about subsidy removal. After all, they may not be schooling here, not with all these bombings and threat of more bombings around. Why should you expose your children to such unnecessary danger?
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Nigeria's population is above 155 million; if Boko Haram kills some, others would be born. But how many are your children! It certainly will take a lot of toll on you and physical stress to bear another. You need your strength to keep serving Nigerians. Those people who lost children in the Madalla church bombings (or other bombings at that), what do they do for Nigeria? Do they wake up at night like you trying to cook up what sellable propaganda to spin again to make your boss continue to like you? All these you do to remain in office because Nigerians need your wealth of experience. At the end of the day, some people would now say that you are in it for the money. Some are even saying you have sold your soul for petro-dollars. I don't know why we are so ungrateful in Nigeria! Instead of thinking about how to immortalize you, these ungrateful and disgruntled Nigerians who live on less than a dollar a day are castigating you. Don't they know how difficult it is to be in government? Look at President Jonathan; he is becoming more gray-haired by the day. Forget the insinuations that all of you are also becoming more fat-pocketed. We are lucky to have you! If they do not judge you right, posterity will! And thank God the construction companies around here are aware of your contributions. I am sure very soon you will get your own church or mosque (as donation, not bribe as these bad belle people are claiming!).
I had earlier promised not to waste your time, but I just had to make those clarifications. It is high time Nigerians started according you the needed respect. And to those claiming that your loss of relevance in Nasarrawa (your home State) led to PDP misfortune in the State, they can jump off Zuma rock if they like. GEJ has chosen you as government mouthpiece; there is nothing they can do about it. At least, not until 2015 when Nigerians turn against your boss at the polls, just as they turned for him in 2011 ( that is if he decides to renege on his promise and takes another shot at the plum job).
To the reason I am writing you, Sir. This economic growth that you presently talk vehemently about. It is not that I do not believe or understand you, I do. Your down-to-earth nature makes it difficult not to believe you even when you are defending a lie. But an illiterate woman in my neighborhood ( sorry Sir, I am writing you from Ado-Ekiti in Ekiti State ) has been bothering me about this your 7.68 percent economic growth. She claims you also said that our economy is the third fastest growing in the world. She asked me how it could be so when she still buys rice at N300 per 'rubber' and beans at N350. She says even the price of garri has not changed, neither is the condition of her family. Most times, the family of 6 has to do with two tins of rice. Her husband wakes up very early to trek to the school where he is a gate-man. Oh! That's not every time. He only treks from the middle to the end of the month when his salary can no longer take him. Do I hear you say he should learn to save? He cannot, sir. His children have to go to school and you know higher education is not free here. Our governor did try to reduce the tuition, but it is still not enough.
Much as I tried to defend you, the woman would not budge. Being an illiterate, she does not understand the difference between GDP growth and per capita growth, but I tried to make her understand. Instead she said any growth that does not impart on the lives of the people is no growth and that such growth only fattens the pockets of people like you. She even asked me to tell you that you are a liar and that posterity would judge you for defending lies. I didn't know that she knew you so well, sir. She asked if it was not the same man with the Northern cap that was defending fuel subsidy removal on TV. She said you dared not walk her street, that everybody there would stone you. Why! When you are not the prostitute saved by Jesus in the Bible. She said the biblical prostitute is better than you. For the prostitute, it was her womanhood that she was selling while in your case; it is your soul and conscience (for, according to her, there are many prostitutes with conscience). Sir, I was shocked when she mentioned the much-publicized fuel subsidy fraud. She told me that when she asked her daughter how much had been stolen, the daughter only said, "Eye mi, eho ni poju. E juuka". (In my dialect, it means 'my mother, the money is too much to be counted). The woman argued that if such money was stolen under the nose of your boss, your boss must surely know about it. She threatened that if she sees you on her black-and-white TV again, she would curse you with her breasts for your lies. Now, honourable Minister, you may not know the import of that, but here in Ekiti, it is a bad thing to be cursed with breasts.
My advice to you, honourable minister, if truly you have been lying, I would urge you to desist. When you look deep down into your soul, do you think posterity would judge you right? Should you die now, would God (Allah ) hold out his hands, saying "Welcome, worthy son." If you cannot answer these questions in the affirmative, then sir, it is time to change, for when we tell ourselves a lie for too long, we may start believing the lie. Before that happens to you, comrade, I beg you reconsider.
This is why I am writing you, Sir. My regards to Oga GEJ and his sonorous-voiced first lady. We love them all.
Yours faithfully,
'Dimeji Daniels, from number 6, Fiyinf'Oluwa street, Adebayo, Ado-Ekiti
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