Machiavelli Letters

Machiavelli Letters:A Letter To The President

Uba Franklin

Your Excellency, I trust this letter finds you in good health and especially in good spirit. For a long time I have entertained the thought of putting my observations together in a letter for your attention, and now that I have done so, I hope you accept it for what it is – a layman’s urgent plea for sincere reflection.

Sir, there are three things especially, that I hope to bring to your notice. These three issues touch our lives intimately as citizens of this country and beg for your prompt attention.

The first is this: The tragedy of power is that it quickly consumes the occupier in a cocoon of lies and sycophancy. Thus men of power are the first casualty of its seductive influence. The people around you will hold you hostage to their conceit and spin an illusion of a reality around you that has very little bearing to the facts on the ground. And these are the facts:

i. Nigerians are no longer able to afford one square meal a day.

ii. Nigerians are dieing in thousands as a result of grinding poverty.

iii. Nigerians have lost faith in your seven-points agenda.

Gone are the days, Mr. president, when a salaried worker can afford to feed his family and send his children to school. Today, half-baked graduates roam the streets searching for non-existent jobs. What they do find is cyber-crime and prostitution and armed-robbery. Things have become so bad Mr. President, that a brand new job sector has been created under you. By this I refer to the lucrative spate of kidnappings in the country. Nobody is save anymore. Not kindergarten children and certainly not our aged grandmothers in the village. The mere fact that one has a well-off relation somewhere marks the person as a potential victim for these bold entrepreneurs.

This brings me to my second concern, and this has to do with Justice and the Rule-of-law which we have been told is a cardinal principle of your government. But the truth is Justice and the Rule-of-Law can be easily manipulated to serve both ends, depending on who is in charge. The law is an ass, so they say, and severally this truism has been grossly exhibited in the grand mockery (some say rape) of natural justice by officers and institutions under your leadership. The unconstitutional handover of Bakassi is a case in point, despite a subsisting court order to maintain status quo. Another is the flagrant witch-hunt of mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the former boss of the EFCC.

Perhaps, this is why the symbol of justice is a blindfolded woman wielding a sword. She also carries a scale, by-the-way, but without her eyes and without good counsel, she certainly has proved incapable of dealing a good measure, at least in Nigeria. This is why today I urgently urge your Excellency to subject your Rule-of-Law to the oversight of natural conscience. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not.

And it is not right that amidst the most gruesome poverty in the history of our Nation that the Ruling class continues to amass mind-boggling wealth for themselves from our collective treasury while the government and the Rule-of-Law places the burden of proof on the hapless victims. But what other proof do we require than the towering mansions and fleet of sleek cars that mock our despair. Daily we experience dubious men who join government or win huge contracts by virtue of political patronage and become multi-millionaires in a heartbeat and become godfathers and ‘sacred cows’; they become power barons who are above the laws of the country. Uniformed police men are assigned to guarantee their protection as bodyguards. But a thief will always be a thief, and the only thing that changes is the scale of opportunity to expand their ambitions and go for our jugular. This is why every one of these opportunists has his jaws firmly locked on crude oil allocation and bunkering; gun smuggling and all manner of vice; especially in the Niger-Delta. They hire these boys, they train them and they arm them to rig elections for politicians who payback by turning a blind eye to the nefarious activities and goings-on. But now the boys have found a more lucrative business in the kidnap industry and politicians who have shot themselves in the foot are suddenly proposing life imprisonment for their protégées. Why not prescribe the same medicine for election riggers? Why not life imprisonment for ex-governors found with their hands on the till? Why life for kidnappers and plea bargaining for politicians? Who is more destructive to Nigeria?

At this juncture, let me ask more rhetoric questions, your Excellency. Why is the Freedom of Information (FOI) Bill being suffocated and mutilated on the floors of the National Assembly? Why are our crime fighting agencies reluctant to ask overnight-millionaires to explain their sudden wealth and match this to their legitimate income? Why is our country wallowing in darkness despite the allocation of huge resources over the years to the power sector? Why has the EFCC been emasculated like a toothless bulldog? Why are our refineries collapsing? Why are all the infrastructure in such a sorry state no matter all the money we have been budgeting for their resuscitation since 1999? Why are our ex-governors enjoying immunity under the guise of Rule-of –law? Why are you recycling and empowering mediocre men with doubtful records of achievements into position of huge responsibilities?

Finally Mr. President, the third thing I wish to bring to your esteemed attention is this: It is not a wise thing to rule by proxy. The concept of servant-leadership in my personal opinion, entails you being down in the trenches and forging the foundation of a brand new egalitarian society for all of us. Platitudes alone can not change negative attitudes, neither will it deter political brigandage and economic sabotage. You must make a conscious effort to pick the right people yourself, not to delegate this responsibility to your party hierarchy and to your former colleagues and their protégées. This is because institutions are merely as credible as the man who oversees it. We saw that with NAFDAC and we are beginning to see that now with the invigorated Ministry of Information and Communication. Good people drive institutions and effective institutions achieve targeted results. We are 150 billion strong, you can not lack for quality materials.

Your Excellency, the destiny of a great country is often tied to the personality of a great leader. His timely Actions or inactions can mar or define the destiny of his country. And you can tell the quality of a leader very early enough. Thus the emergence in America of an Obama excites the world. You were once an Obama yourself, sir. In Katsina, as governor, you single handedly stopped the rot and laid a powerful foundation. It was because of this antecedent that the progressive camp hailed your emergence as President of Nigeria despite the ugly nature of the elections that granted your triumph. And with your victory at the Supreme Court, we thought you would quickly throw off any allegiance you owed any cabal or class of people and face your destiny and that of Nigeria. But almost three years down the line we are forced to conclude that nothing will change. Sadly your government is becoming another missed opportunity that abounds in our history. It is rather gloomy and sad.

Your Excellency, today an obvious dilemma faces you. On one hand is the powerful desire to do the right thing for Nigeria and on the other hand is the seductive lure of a second term in office. That these two desires have been for long mutually exclusive agendas in our great party PDP is for now beside the point. So far, you have chosen not to rock-the-boat unnecessarily, but whether this will guarantee you a second term in office as your ex-colleagues have assured you, only time will tell. As for me, if you want my candid advice, I will ask you to reduce your seven-points agenda to just one agenda – the availability of constant electric power. This alone will guarantee you immortality and a second (and perhaps third) term in office. Do this and every other thing will be forgiven. OBJ gave us GSM, give us Electricity. Other governments will come one day and give us Food, Railway service and perhaps, good education and health. One Agenda per term. That is Nigeria democracy. Thank you.