winning the nomination of your party for the
presidency of Nigeria.
Though you and I are different in ethnicity and
religion, we have many important things in
common. I am a few years older than you –
which means that if you and I had been Yoruba
boys born in the same Yoruba town or village,
we would have belonged to about the same age-
grade Association ( with us Yoruba, age-grade
loyalty is traditionally a very important factor of
life). Moreover, you and I were young Nigerians
in an era, the 1950s, when our up-and coming
country of Nigeria was a source of great pride to
its citizens, and an emerging titan eagerly
awaited by most informed people all over the
world.
The three regions of our federation (East, North
and West) were engaged in an ambitious rivalry
for progress and for improvements in the quality
of life of our people. They were able to do that
and achieve considerable successes because our
constitutional structure gave them much leeway
to manage their own affairs within the common
Nigerian family. We arrived at independence in
1960 believing that our country was set on the
path to becoming the blackman’s world power of
modern times.
Unhappily, now that you and I are in our
seventies, there is nothing left of our country’s
ambitions and pride – indeed, there is hardly
anything left of our country itself. Relentlessly
crooked up, violated, robbed and depleted since
1960, our Nigeria seems now to be stumbling
towards its demise.
As you prepare for your election, I decided to
write you this open letter concerning our country,
because I know you will understand the pain and
expectations behind my words. The purpose of
most of Nigeria’s rulers since 1960 has been to
weaken and even destroy regional and local
initiatives in order to gather all power, control
and influence together at the federal center.
Their success in doing that has enabled them to
remove the management of development far away
from our people, and to institute at the federal
centre a viciously corrupt, wasteful and
incompetent monstrosity. Reduced to the status of
beggar clients of the federal robber barons, the
state governments, as well as the local
governments, collapsed and fell in line as
submissive incompetents and mini-robbers.
In the process, real and productive enterprise
quickly declined among our people, as the best
and most ambitious rushed to join the ranks of
the sharers of fraudulently acquired wealth from
the public coffers. Our schools and universities,
our public service, our police force, our military,
our judiciary, all our governmental agencies
(electoral commission, secret service, central
bank, ports service, immigration service, public
examination bodies, etc) – all collapsed under the
weight of crooked control, massive corruption
and generalized disloyalty. Poverty descended
mightily into our country and became the lot of
the overwhelming and increasing majority of our
people. Our government itself admits that, today,
about 70% of our citizens live in “absolute
poverty” and that that percentage keeps
increasing. With the growing poverty have
escalated horrific crimes, a culture of dishonesty,
a rush of our youths to Salafist fundamentalist
terrorism, and mass flights of the educated to
other lands – all of which are compounding the
poverty.
From your well-known record as a leader of our
country, I know that you are not only aware of
these things, but that, in common with many
members of our generation, you are seriously
pained by them. I confess that I was very angry
with you during your brief stint as military ruler,
1983-5. First, you seemed to me to be power-
drunk at the time—because you made no
distinction between the corrupt who had been
stealing and sharing public money under Shagari
and those who were known to have been
resisting the robbery. I belonged to the frontline
of senators who were well known to have, on the
floor of the Senate, resisted the mass corruption,
and yet your military government detained me
(and many like me), and I languished for four
months in prison without any accusation–even
without being asked any question by any official.
And then, you and Idiagbon expended most of
your obviously shining capabilities in pursuing
nebulous and amateurish programmes like WAI
(War Against Indiscipline), when what our
country really needed was (after you had fiercely
shot down corruption as you did) to massively
divert our enormous oil revenues into
investments in the lives of our people–through
programmes for expansion and diversification of
education, modern job skills development,
entrepreneurial development, small business
development, promotion of modern farming,
policies for improving the quality and reputation
of our labour force and thereby attracting
investments and businesses into our country,
policies for promotion of exports, etc. Put a
people to work and persistently multiply the
economic opportunities available to them, and
the attraction to prosperity through competitive
enterprise will gradually suppress indiscipline in
their land. Fanciful programmes like WAI can
have no lasting benefit or future – as I hope you
must know by now. That is why the man who
ousted you, Babangida, was able quite easily to
wipe out all the patriotic gains of your regime.
Furthermore, I though t it was a pity that you did
not appear to recognize that the over-
centralization that was being given to our
federation was the foundation of our ills as a
country. You were wrong in thinking that
punishing the corrupt leaders would destroy
corruption abidingly. What is needed is to change
the system into which corruption has been built.
In our country’s case, we needed (and we need)
to reduce the magnitude of our federal
government and empower our state and local
governments, which are nearer the people, to
bear most of the burden of development. Then
we need to give recognition and respect to our
various nationalities in structuring the federation
– which should mean that our larger nations
would each constitute a state, and contiguous
groups of our smaller nationalities would be
assisted to form states, just as the Indians sensibly
and profitably did in the 1960s.
By refusing to go that route, Nigeria has
abysmally depressed its nationalities. For
instance, my Yoruba nation came into Nigeria in
1914 as easily the fastest modernizing nationality
in Black Africa; and we entered into
independence with Nigeria in 1960 as the
development front-liner and pace-setter in Africa.
Today, we are a battered, poor, and disoriented
nation, and most of our achievements have been
wrecked, thanks to our being part of a Nigeria
that destroys its peoples. Every other Nigerian
nationality has similar stories to tell. My brother,
I am, by nature and by upbringing, averse to
merely lamenting an evil development; I act to
change it. My potential urge, even as I write this,
is to exert myself with others like me towards
pulling my Yoruba nation out of Nigeria if Nigeria
will not change course – and that is something
that we Yoruba are perfectly capable to achieve if
we are pushed to start upon it. And the same is
true of some other persons and nations. In short,
let’s not ignore or minimize the danger of
Nigeria’s dissolution.
I know you have what it takes to change and
save Nigeria. I wish you luck in your election –
and I wish Nigeria luck.
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