I just feel like sharing this letter with nairalanders tonight before going to bed, please enjoy every paragraph, sentence, word and every line in this letter.
Baba Obasanjo, sir, I read your love letter to
President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan with
delight; at times with sobriety; and at other
times with disgust. I am sure when you read to
the end of my love letter to you, you will
understand why.

Your Excellency, in your usual characteristic
manner, you brought heaven into the “fray” of
your letter to the President. That is good,
because in the matter between you and the
President, the other arbiters like Ibrahim
Badamasi Babangida, Abdulsalami Alhaji
Abubakar, Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma are
inconsequential.
What exactly, sir, did your reading of the Bible
teach you? Or, if I may ask, did your training
at the National Open University of Nigeria
(NOUN) not tell you that you do not speak ill
of your leaders the way you did in the open
market?

As an elder, I leave you to determine whether
the way you de-robed a king in public was
wise. And in de-robing the king, you brought in
heaven, which has taught that we be taciturn
and refrain from speaking ill of leaders.
There is no doubt that you got some points
right. Very right! And it could only come from
you, but I shudder when a man of your calibre
would repeat an allegation, especially that of
snipers and 1,000 Nigerians on political watch
list. Are you not in a position to confirm this
before throwing that information out there?
My former President, I like that aspect where
you said no one is born to rule. But what
rankles is where you stated: “For me, I believe
that politically, it was in the best interest of
Nigeria that you, a Nigerian from minority
group in the South could rise to the highest
pinnacle of political leadership. If Obasanjo
could get there, Yar’Adua could get there and
Jonathan could get there, any Nigerian can. It
is now not a matter of the turn of any section.
It has been proved that no group-ethnic,
linguistic, religious or geographical location-
has monopoly of materials for leadership of
our country. And no group solely by itself can
crown any of its members the Nigeria CEO. It
is good for Nigeria.”

Sir, if you had the opportunity for eight years
and Yar’Adua could not go eight years on
account of his untimely demise, which many of
us in the North believe you foreknew and
mischievously exploited, why do you think that
a minority from the South (unlike the majority
that had ruled for upward of eight or more
years) should get one term? So it is only
minorities from the South that should get
“minority years?”

Somewhere else, you claimed that Jonathan
told you he was going to serve only one term.
We are happy that you did not say there is a
pact, just like we the northerners did not say
there was one between you and us when we, or
our elders in uniform, agreed with you over
“pepper soup in an officers’ mess” of a prison
to do one term.

Thank you, sir, for reminding Jonathan that he
will answer to God. So also will many others in
positions of authority, past and present.
I do not wish to comment on some issues
because I agree with you, but what I cannot
understand is why you made this an open
letter when almost all through the letter you
talked about instances, and there are many,
where you met the President and discussed
with him.

Are you angry he did not take advice coming
from a larger than life statesman like you? Are
you playing the script you agreed to with some
of your G-5 boys and some of those generals
you copied this letter to (please note that
almost all the men they visited were the ones
you also copied)? Or, is it because Al-
Mustapha, loose cannon in all rights, is on the
loose with all the files he allegedly stole from
the Villa? Is it pure, plain busybody attitude
that you are telling all of us what you already
discussed behind closed-doors? Do you
remember what happened to a man called
Audu Ogbeh because he dared to do what you
are doing? Going back to the Bible that you
are very conversant with, why do unto
Jonathan what you did not want done unto
you? And I am sadly forced to remember one
of the generals you copied this letter.
Whenever he was/is asked to comment on
some state issues, he would decline because,
according to him, he has ways of reaching the
number one. Why have you refused to toe this
path of honour and yet you talk about honour?
Anyway, thank you for making some of these
issues public, because we now know how some
of you fiddle with our destiny. And like you
said earlier, there is a day of reckoning with
Him to whom we must all give account.
It is interesting what you wrote regarding the
manner in which the President is seeking to go
for another term, even after he assured you
that he was not interested. I can only say that
Jonathan is learning from a master; a son
learning from his father. Sir, I think your boy
learnt a few tricks from you.

Passionately, I noted that you wrote: “When
you won the election, one of the issues you
very early pursued was that of one term of six
years. That convinced me that you meant what
you told me before my speech at the
campaign. Mr President, whatever may be your
intention or plan, I cannot comment much on
the constitutional aspect of your second term
or what some people call third term. That is
for both legal and judicial attention. But if
constitutionally you are on a strong wicket if
you so decide, it will be fatally morally flawed.
“As a leader, two things you must cherish and
hold dear among others are trust and honour
both of which are important ingredients of
character. I will want to see anyone in the
Office of the Presidency of Nigeria as a man or
woman who can be trusted, a person of
honour in his words and character. I will
respect you for upholding these attributes and
for dignifying that office.
Chinua Achebe said, “One of the truest tests of
integrity is its blunt refusal to be
compromised. It is a lesson for all leaders
including you and me. However, Mr President,
let me hope that as you claimed that you have
not told anybody that you are contesting and
that what we see and hear is a rumbling of
overzealous aides, you will remain a leader
that can be believed and trusted without
unduly passing the buck or engaging in game
of denials.”

Baba, I agree totally with you that a man who
is quick to give his word must abide by it. The
other alternative is to keep quiet and be very
slow to speak; that way, you will not be
accused of lacking integrity. That is why I doff
my hat to you for not openly conceding to the
Third Term agenda when, in actual fact, there
were surreptitious moves to the contrary. That
way, also, your integrity did not suffer any
bashing when the Senate rode roughshod on
the inclusion of that item in the new
constitution we were planning. You see why I
say Jonathan in some ways looks like his
political father who now appears disgruntled
that the rug he has under his feet in the PDP is
being pulled off.

It is amazing, sir, that you are today
declassifying information on how Asiwaju Bola
Tinubu was bought over to deliver political
dividends years after it happened, even when it
happened when you held the fort as the PDP
BoT chair. For what reason(s), are you now
divulging this information? Is it because it is
the right time or you are pained by a recent
occurrence? May be you should also pen
another letter to General Muhammadu Buhari
to tell him what awaits him if the right price is
paid to the Asiwaju, again. Remember those
five governors who left your party? They
deserve an open letter to tell them the stuff
the leader of the Asiwaju Progressives Congress
(APC) is made of.


If President Jonathan indeed sold out Edo,
Anambra, and Ondo States to the opposition as
you claimed, then it was very rotten of him. I
beg to side with you here and tell those who
say Jonathan is more politically suave than you
to shut up. How could the President be
accused of selling out these three states like
you were said to have sold out Borno, Yobe,
and Kebbi states when you were in the saddle
as president?
I am sure that there are certain things he did
not learn from you as a political child. You
aptly put it when you said: ”I have heard it
said particularly within the presidency circle
that the disaffected Governors and members of
PDP are my children.

I begin to wonder if,
from top to bottom, any PDP member in
elective office today is not directly or
indirectly a beneficiary and, so to say, my
political child. Anyone who may claim
otherwise will be like a river that has forgotten
its source. But like a good father, all I seek is
peaceful and amicable solution that will re-
unite the family for victory and progress of
the family and the nation and nothing else.”
When you were writing about that overnight
leader of the South-west PDP, I was moved,
because if we all keep mute when such a
character is thrown up, then we and all our
children are in trouble.

That is what we all
thought, too, when a governor was kidnapped
in this country and support came from Abuja
for such an act. In fact, a friend of mine in the
security services noted that it was the
beginning of the kind of impunity that we all
now complain about.
But you summed it up when you said, “God is
never a supporter of evil and will surely save
PDP and Nigeria from the hands of destroyers.


If everything fails and the party cannot be
retrieved from the hands of criminals and
commercial jobbers and discredited touts, men
and women of honour, principles, morality and
integrity must step aside to rethink.”
In conclusion, I believe that all that you have
written is food for thought for all of us that
when we take certain actions and encourage
certain tendencies that are unholy, we may
reap the benefits of such ventures.

The ball,
like you said, sir, is in the court of Jonathan.
He can become the Nigerian hero, if he so
wishes; but he should note that no matter
what an elder says, you may not like his tone
or method, but you do well to take the kernels
of his speech and deal as appropriate.
We have heard that he has told his aides not
to react, so we are waiting for his personal
response, hoping that as a true Ijaw man, as
opposed to those ones who think every other
person is an enemy, he will be decorous in
putting it all in the public domain the way the
elder statesman has done.

This is because if he
does not put it in the public domain and
chooses the private method, we are still going
to continue to get letters like this where people
divulge private discussions in a way that makes
them look good, and the other party less than
good. Mr. President, over to you!