Dear President Jonathan, let me begin this
letter by telling you what you already
know; by reminding you of what you are
not expected to have forgotten: the year
2015 has been predicted to be, and is being
widely seen as, the year of Nigeria’s
unravelling. The year that Leviathan
contraption knocked together by Frederick
Lugard for the glory of the British Empire,
will totter back to its separate aboriginal
parts and drown an already overwhelmed
Africa with another swarm of hapless
refugees in an unspeakable maelstrom of
the typical African misery..

This dreadful prediction is generally
believed to have originated from the star-
gazing wizardry of American soothsayers,
reinforced by the frighteningly frank
morbidity of studies such as Karl Maier’s
This House Has Fallen. Some Nigerians as
well as non-Nigerians interested in
Nigeria’s affairs shudder at the threatening
inevitability of this prediction. Others
dismiss it as another tale from the seamless
yarn of Nostradamus, the religious among
them claiming that the God that brought us
together this far is not about to abandon us
and let us fall apart. The rich and fat
kleptocrats who hold their knives to the
carcass of the Nigerian elephant are too
avaricious, too satiated, too visionless to
notice the dangers in the Nigerian forest,
forever festering, as they do, in the illusion
that the booty is far too big, too sumptuous
to vanish under their gaze. Worthy
descendants of ancient Nero, they feast
while the country burns. The politically
clever among this group try to paper over
the cracks and fissures in the Nigeria house
with dubious “advertorials” and syrupy
sloganeering as if a loud noise of can
smother the stench of a rotting corpse.
Mr. President, between the morbid
prognostication of the first group and the
heady optimism of the second lies the real
truth of the Nigerian condition as well as
the sane, intelligent appreciation and
analysis which the situation requires. The
contraption over which you preside is not a
country yet: it is still very much a work-in-
progress with its frustratingly rough edges
and unpolished aspects. I am tempted to
conclude that you yourself know this.
Which was why you convoked that huge
National Conference last year, an act many
Nigerians saw as so suspiciously close to
the end of your first term as President as to
constitute a major plank in the campaign
for a second. But, at least, yours was an
attempt at a task many of your
predecessors in office had routinely shied
away from, though we are all wondering
what benefits are likely to emerge from that
very expensive national constitutional
jamboree.
Oh, please forgive my patriotic digression.
The burden of this open letter is the
impending national election, the run-off to
it, its actual execution, and its possible
aftermath. Mr. President, you will agree
with me that this election is so crucial, so
fateful that its outcome will decide the
coming to pass or otherwise of the doom
so loudly and so frightfully foretold for
Nigeria. The troubling signs are all over the
place, as visible, even conspicuous as Aso
Rock which overlooks your presidential
abode. Right now, the whole northeastern
flank of our country is literally out of and
beyond your control. The kidnappings,
blood-letting, and other gruesome
barbarities in these parts make the Dark
Ages look like a humane era. The Chibok
Girls have been gone for almost nine
months, with no possible solution from
your government, and the whole wide world
is defining Nigeria’s international standing
by the utter helplessness and apparent
apathy of its government. Like those of
other people in the world, my heart bleeds
each time I remember these girls (and I do
so many, many times a day), the manner of
their abduction, and worse still, what fate
must have befallen them in the hands of
their violent captors. We have seen you
traversing the country, making speeches,
and waxing bold on the hustings, but we
have not heard any credible anti-insurgency
plan that would make Nigeria safer in your
second term
Another alarming phenomenon is the
treasonous threat from some ‘militants’
from your region of origin who claim to be
speaking and acting in your defence and on
your behalf. One of them actually declared
for the whole world to hear that ‘Nigeria will
be history’ if you are not ‘given’ a second
term. The closer we get to the election, the
louder has become the thunder of this piece
of ethnic blackmail. For the avoidance of
doubt, I am one of those who fervently
believe that the Niger Delta has been done
a terribly raw deal by previous Nigerian
governments, and that a combination of
reparation and reconstruction has become
a compulsory political and economic (and
environmental!) necessity. But, Mr.
President, have you been hearing what
these ‘militants’ have been saying? Have
you been listening to them? Are they really
speaking on your behalf? What do you see
and sense in their threats: a bond of ethnic
solidarity, or a threat to Nigeria, the country
over which you preside? Are you a
president of the whole of Nigeria or a tribal
champion for an ethnic enclave? Have you
done a study of the sociology and
statistical diversity of the votes that
brought you to the presidential throne – or
that Nigerian conundrum called ‘doctrine of
necessity’ which eased your way to full
presidential power a few years ago?
Mr. President, while the country cannot
hold you responsible for the opinions and
utterances of other people no matter how
close they appear to be to you, it is your
bounden duty to disclaim incendiary
utterances capable of setting the Nigeria
house ablaze. Put succinctly, it is your
inescapable duty to respond PERSONALLY
and unequivocally to all such utterances
with an emphatic: NOT IN MY NAME! I have
not heard you say that, Mr. President. The
whole country is waiting for you to say so.
We have not seen your Inspector General of
Police rein in the flame-throwers; nor have
we seen your Attorney-General read them
the portions of the Nigerian constitution
forbidding their inflammatory incitements.
There surely must be a wide discernible
difference between a national leader and a
tribal jingoist. Say something, Mr.
President. Say something. Your silence in
this instance is anything but golden. Your
ostrich cannot hide for long, for the
Nigerian sand has become so transparent,
thanks to many years of painful wisdom
and enlightened skepticism of the people.
Now, the impending election. As I once said
in an open letter of this nature to one of
your predecessors in the presidential office,
in my reading of Nigeria’s history, no event
has so constantly, so serially threatened
the peace and very existence of Nigeria as
the conduct of general elections: the
botched federal elections of 1964, the
Western regional elections of 1965 whose
blatant rigging led to the ‘weti e’
insurrection, then the January 1966 military
coup, then the pogrom on the Igbo people,
then the secession of Biafra, then the
(un)civil war; the ‘landslide fraud’ by the
NPN in 1983, then another ‘weti e’ episode,
then the military coup of January 1984; the
June 12 1993 election widely considered as
the freest and fairest in Nigeria’s history,
annulled all the same (or for that reason)
by General Babangida and his cohorts, then
the long period of civil strife and the
eventuation of General Abacha’s murderous
despotism. The election of 2003 and 2007
did not go without the usual rigging, while
the one of 2011 that brought you to a full
presidency ended up with violent protests
in certain parts of the country.
And 2015, here we come. The year of
Nostradamus. The year of the make-or-
break election. Mr. President, from its every
indication, from its verbal language and
body gesture the world has been telling you
how crucial the coming election is and why
every step must be taken to make sure it
ends up as fair and free and credible. Kofi
Anan and Emeka Anyaokwu, two
international potentates, have come to
Abuja to supervise a peace accord between
you and your opponent, General Buhari.
John Kerry, the American Secretary of State,
has also called, telling you and your fellow
political warriors that his country will offer
no safe haven to Nigeria’s election riggers.
I deeply appreciate the counsel of these
honourable men even as I add my own
humble entreaty: Mr. President, make sure
the coming election does not land Nigeria
in the usual post-election crises. Do not
handle it with the impunity that has
characterized many of your actions and
those of your party’s functionaries. You are
the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed
Forces and Chief Security Officer of the
Nation: use these powers justly and fairly
by allowing the security agents to supervise
the elections in a non-partial manner. I say
this because experience has shown that
election rigging in Nigeria is invariably
carried out with the full and blatant
‘cooperation’ of security agents. Many of
them do not even pretend about it as they
often ask ‘who you think I go side? No be
de person who pay my salary, the person
who give me kola chop?’. Our police and
other security operatives have always
looked the other way when illegal ballot
thumb-printing is going on, when ballot-
box stuffing is in progress, and when ballot
snatchers are at work. They have perfected
the act of kidnapping and ‘disappearing’
leaders of the opposing party and holding
them down till the elections are over. This
is why the ruling party has always ‘won’
elections in Nigeria. This is why every
major election in Nigeria is trailed by all
manner of rancor and mayhem.
Mr. President, your party, the PDP, has
ruled Nigeria for over 15 years now; it has
established an unconscionable control over
all the levers of power. You will scatter this
country if you allow them to use that power
to disadvantage the other parties. The
major cause of Nigeria’s electoral fiasco is
the refusal of the ruling party (at national
and state levels) to allow a peaceful change
of power. That kind of civilized democratic
transition is often seen as a sign of
weakness. And when the ruling party makes
peaceful change impossible that way, it
invariably makes violent change inevitable.
Please don’t make a mockery of the
‘I’ (standing for ‘Independent’) in INEC. Let
victory go to whichever party the Nigerian
people choose to embrace. Again, as I told
one of your predecessors at this kind of
electoral juncture a couple of years ago,
please remember there is life after power.
Let us do everything to circumvent the
2015 apocalypse. Make sure History does
not write you down as the last President of
the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Your compatriot,
Niyi Osundare
New Orleans, Jan. 30, 2015