Ini Akpan Morgan
16 July 2019
Dear President Muhammadu Buhari,
Permit me Mr President, as usual, to vacate my responsibility as a loyal citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who is concerned for, and about the direction our beloved country is presently heading. I do not have to be an erstwhile President to write to you, Your Exvellency. I appeal to you to appreciate my stake in the Nigerian nation and the need for you to also hear me out.
ON YOUR LIST OF MINISTERS
Mr President, as long as time will not stop ticking, it means that it will wait for no mortal man sir, time will not wait for any man to avoid permitting it’s wasting. You have confessed that you have done your best for our country in the last administration, and you have also accepted that you need to do more this time around. But Mr President, the symptoms of your challenges of 2015 are beginning to manifest again with your running your government without a cabinet in place, 12 days going into the second month from the day of your inauguration into office as president sir. This is sad sir.
I am not wrong supporting you as a “promising leader” from 2013 Mr President, I still hope against hope that my believe in you will not fail this time because you have no other opportunity to redeem any misadventure you may suffer: we are not gods to know your true intentions and you hardly feel responsible to being open to your citizens.
And so I have decided to write you again, to shake you out of your present retarded approach to your second term administration into the vigour and the energy it demands. This was exactly how we started counting the months of your inactions in 2015 on minor issues of governance, and God will not let you take us back that way again, this time. I am now in a crusade against your taking us back to your last administration sir. And this calls for the collective communal national prayers for you Mr President.
There is a spiritual stronghold against you and he is somewhere around you, holding you down spiritually Your Excellency. The ominous signs are everywhere, sir; but I still believe that no other politician in this country can help Nigeria at this time, very sad to say, than you can. You are the President sir.
There are many basic adjustments we need to make to our laws Mr President. And you cannot afford to start with making us count the months of your inactions against you sir, especially on a very simple matter as releasing your list of ministers for confirmation by the 9th senate sir.
I know that you fear to recruit another sets of political “booby traps” who would distabilize your efforts at good governance this time, but you have absolute powers to do as you should with your appointees, and this explains out how your fears for an eventual poor recruitment are misplaced, misguided and dodgy.
You just cannot explain your delay in passing on your list of ministers to the Senate Mr President, you have no good reason sir. What have you been doing for the 4 years of your last administration if you could not identify the prevailing recruitment problems you encountered and putting the blueprints of their solutions in view. In the last 4 years, you should have identified the men and women who would assist you in vacating good governance during your second term when you desired to run again for your office.
This is how serious this matter is, Your Excellency. My expectation, as I would if I was wearing your shoes, sir, would have been to hand my list of ministers to both Ahmed Ibrahim Lawal, the Senate President and Femi Gbajabiamila, the Speaker while the inauguration dinner was ongoing on the night of May 29 2019, and by the very next morning, Nigerians would have had a new cabinet in view, “hitting the grounds” of your next 4 years “running”. Prayers will always help a nation Mr President.
Your Excellency, by holding back your list of ministers – if you truly have it with you – you are behaving like a pregnant woman who attempts to hide her protruding stomach from public view when she is in the public. How is that possible sir? You can only succeed at that when you have delivered your baby, sir – so send your list of ministers to the senate if you have it at all. If the list of your ministers is with you, why should you be under “intense pressure” to release it?
Surely, the list is not with you, for if it is, in my opinion Mr President, you are not helping the psychological and emotional health of Nigerians. You are in a mental and spiritual war with your citizens and it does not look like you care, sir. But I still say that there is no better leader than you. Only you can deal with the laws our business men and their lawyers are using to lock us up, making us prisoners in their economic cells.
INSECURITY IN NIGERIA
Mr President, I am sorry to say that we are dealing with the federal characterization of official rascality gone sour. When criminality is considered on federal character, the possibility of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) being rewarded with the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) also makes it possible for the “Boko Haram” to be rewarded with the North East Development Commission (NEDC).
I fear, Your Excellency, that with the brutal murder of Chief (Mrs) Funke Olakunrin Fasoranti, strengthening the fact that our highways in the South West of Nigeria has been overran by criminal elements, methinks you are slowly losing your grip on security as Commander in Chief. You are failing woefully Mr President and this is very sad. Look clearly, you may soon have to reward the South West with their South West Development Commission (SWDC), always very easily predicted and will come to pass – and na us, poor people, go still dey suffer am!
In the submission of Ms Christiane Amanpour, the veteran journalist covering the wars across the globe for the Cable News Network (CNN), by her experience and exposure, has allegedly accused you of being culpable and seemingly supporting your kinsmen, the Fulanis, in terrorising and killing Nigerians who overwhelmingly gave you the mandate you are enjoying as President.
Let me tell you Mr President that social crimes undertaken for economic reason has its common and traceable trails, but the calibre of the strategy used by alleged “herdsmen” on our highway to waylay commuters does not look like the venture for economic gains. It clearly portrays the “cleansing” of a people. The intentions are to kill and not to rob.
Let it be known to you that instead of degrading Boko Haram as your government claims, you, your security apparatuses and the communities habouring criminal elements have failed in proactive intelligence and civic duties. Clearly Boko Haram has changed name, their mode of operations, and have left the north east for the south west, like MEND left the South South to the North East, enlisting as Boko Haram. The Yoruba race appears very smart. Killing Chief Funke Olakunri Fasoranti is very disingenuous if it is for securing a “development commission”, Your Excellency. We cannot continue like this sir.
The recent letter from your senior colleague, Olusegun Obasanjo is timely and eye opening and I think you should wake up from your present inactions. Yes! Mr President, you have appeared to me snoring upon your presidential desk – a very bad timing for such dereliction Mr President.
MY EXPECTATIONS
For me it was unforgivable when you said you were “under intense pressure” to do the simplest job on your table – submitting the list of your cabinet members. If this was as I expected, you would have released the list at your inauguration dinner on May 29 2019 and I subsequently thought you should not fail on the day the 9th Assembly resumed on 2 July 2019, it means you are indeed a “slow goer” about governance, and as the leader of government, you are inspiring hopelessness.
Mr President, should you be under “intense pressure” to form your executive cabinet after spending more than 4 years as President? Mr President it is a shame I cannot fathom nor comprehend. As your ardent supporter, I have watched many, with whom we started fighting for you in 2013, deny and reject you. I stood my grounds without any good reason from you for me to so do, because I felt a leader should be supported to succeed. But Mr President, you appear hopeless and tactless, and this is frightening.
I expect your list of ministers to reach the 9th Senate before the August body retires to their yearly recess. And I expect that the leaders in the communities where crimes are actualized should be questioned. What is happening to the air and road patrol units of the Nigerian Police, and those of all other agencies that service security in this country and the military, Mr President? Why are they all locked in, in there barracks?
How can we have criminals build camps in the forest around communities in this country and we cannot trace them? The other day, Mr President, Pastor Sarah Ina Omaku, narrating the kidnap and molestation of a father, mother and a daughter in tears before her congregants in Abuja, openly begged you to do something about the killings and the molestations of the helpless. People have been kidnapped, ransomed paid, got released, and they reported to the public how organized the criminals are, Your Excellency. Nobody cares about intelligence gathering.
Without your Ministers in place, your operations are unconstitutional sir; and how do you march on with policy making and directing alone?
Get our helicopters flying over our forest regions to locate every criminal hide out in the South West. Extricate yourself from the heinous tag you are wearing Mr President, dig out this criminals and prove to the world that they are not “Fulani herdsmen”, and if they are, do the right thing – use Sharia law of an eye for an eye for all of them. That way, you will bleach yourself off the stain of supporting terrorism in Nigeria.
God bless you my President,
I am yours,
Ini Akpan Morgan
Uyo, Nigeria
“time.subsidaries@gmail.com”
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