We are faced in a few days’ time with making a choice concerning what path and direction to set our country on. The question is: should we continue along the current path? Or should we reconsider our course and re-calibrate?
I greet you in the name of our dear Lord, Jesus Christ. I also bring glad tidings on behalf of my best friend and unrepentant partner/supporter—Iya, aka, maamaa!
I know it’s been a while since I communicated with some of you in any form. For that, I apologize. It will be simple to find one excuse or another for having not been in touch but the truth is, I could have done better. I should do better. And I ask that you forgive me.
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For a few others, we have been in touch more recently and have had moments of discussion, of fellowship, and of laughter and joy. For that, I am grateful. Those moments of familial community linger for eternity: they encourage, they reassure, and they re-affirm. The bonds that exist among us are not coincidental but pre-ordained and I thank God for putting all of you in my life.
I am writing to you today on a matter that is of utmost importance to me and, I daresay should be so, to you. Take that back, it is a matter of utmost importance to our children and their children yet unborn. We are faced in a few days’ time with making a choice concerning what path and direction to set our country on. The question is: should we continue along the current path? Or should we reconsider our course and recalibrate?
After 16 years of being on this path, we have seen the mismanagement and wanton looting of our commonwealth, a near abandonment of responsibility with regards to our territorial integrity, and the indiscriminate abuse of our religious and ethnic sensibilities. We have also been witnesses to gross and continuously growing unemployment, and the selfish patronage of so-called power centers with the view of sustaining power however costly.
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Whenever questions arise highlighting the futility of staying such a course, agitating skeptics (me included) are labeled as anarchists, ingrates and ignorant. We are reminded that we could not have it better and that the path and our navigator are the best our country ever had in our entire history. We are not offered any evidence convincing enough to allay our fears and justify our continued trudge along this path. Only recently, one of such current-path-defenders compared our present overall ruler with Jesus Christ! Why not, he claims. In his estimation, like Christ, our ruler has been offered to us by God as a redeemer. I’m sure you heard.
On Saturday March 28, 2015, we are finally chanced to take a stand based on a review of our journey thus far on this one path. Simultaneously, we are faced with an assessment of other paths, and the likely destinations they connect. I hear there are no less than 14 gladiators in the contest representing these paths we speak of. But make no mistake, the election this coming weekend is a choice on two candidates: Jonathan and Buhari. We are faced with picking one of these two and so doing, make a decision on which path to tread for a few years to come.
Now then, if you will, let’s do a little exercise. Let’s cut out the noise, drown out all the distractions, and put these two men side by side. Let’s examine them outside of all the labels and rhetoric oft-used as garbs to dress them. Let’s ignore those clichéd sentiments centered on religion and ethnicity. For example therefore, let’s cut out the conspiracies about codes in the Bible and or the Koran that supposedly predispose a nation to growth and prosperity based on its “God-bestowed” leadership. I have utmost respect for the faith each and every one of you subscribes to and my comment here is without any intent to minimize your belief. Let’s also do away (for the purpose of this exercise) with the primordial thinking of “we own na we own.” Knowing that we are all from the south-south part of the country, I understand that this is perhaps the most difficult urge to resist. But resist we must if we are to get this exercise done clear-eyed.
So, Buhari versus Jonathan. For the purpose of time and space, lets’ restrict ourselves to the following three traits: Integrity or the capacity to be true to one’s words; incorruptibility or the disposition not to reap where one has not sown; conscientiousness or the willingness to follow through and see that a job is done. On each one of these three counts, my estimation is that Buhari stands head and shoulder above Jonathan.
I am yet to find any evidence that Jonathan stayed true to any promise he made when canvassing for our votes in 2011. If he did, it must have been aimed at satisfying one sectional interest or the other or geared at hoodwinking us for a second time just to get our votes on Saturday. He has not been genuine in making promises with the aim of fulfilling them and thus making the nation better off. Here’s a man whose first gift to us was to remove the so-called fuel price subsidies after promising not to do so. Contrast this with a man who has tried all his adult life to pursue wholeheartedly any promise he ever made. We have seen him do it as a governor, as a federal commissioner, as a chairman at PTF, and as a head of state. In fact his biggest offence seems to be his commitment to bringing the crooks among us to book.
The quarrel among Nigerians is not about whether Jonathan is corrupt or not. We know he is. The debate has been on how far and how much. He told us to our face that he does not give a damn about declaring his assets. Ask yourself, how does a man (and his wife) lay claim to so much wealth from being public servants for the better part of the last 20 years? Contrast that with a man who has held public office at every level and yet lives and operates just like you and I or like any other member of our fast dwindling middle class. I don’t see how Buhari will be disposed to corruptly enrich himself or encourage his staff to do so at this stage of his life.
If there is anything we have observed about the Jonathan years in office, it has to be his glaring unwillingness to follow through on his job. Faced with losing an election, Jonathan has worked in 5 weeks like he has not done in 5 years. Boko Haram is finally on the run, the Immigration recruitment bereaved finally have their job offers, Chibok families have all the attention at last. Imagine what would have been if he started out this conscientiously. Contrast that with a man who set out as head of state on New Year’s Day in 1984 and stayed consistent till higher and bigger interests pushed him out of office.
The pundits tell us it is hard to predict how this election will go but I am sure how my vote will go and I plead that you consider my letter to you as you decide on how yours will go. I want us as a family to be able to lift our heads after the votes are cast and counted. I want us to be able to say with these our votes, we have set our nation on a path that is yet able to redeem our present. A path that will lead to a glorious destination where our children and their children will look back and be thankful to us for the choice we made on their behalf. Beloved, I implore you to vote on Saturday and I implore you to vote Buhari.
Sincerely,
Uyi Lawani ([email protected])
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