CNN International interview with Nigeria's President Obasanjo and USAfricaonline.com Publisher Chido Nwangwu on Democracy and Security Issues

"Obasanjo has ruined this country...."
An open letter to Nigeria's President Obasanjo

By Prof. Niyi Osundare

Special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston and USAfricaonline.com

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Dear President Obasanjo:
As you may have noticed, this is my third public letter to you in the past two years. The situation in our country constitutes the burden of each letter, especially the wide, hypocritical gap between your "democratic" avowals and the tyranny in your actual practice. I am assuming the usual epistolary mode once again because of the directness of its thrust and the personal implications of its tenor. Here is another sound of alarm, another note of warning, from a compatriot saddened and scandalised by the precipitous deterioration of Nigeria under your watch.

Let me begin with an episode that bespeaks the horrors of these times. About a week ago, I was on a visit to a family here in Ibadan. A solidly educated family by any standard, one that any progressive country in the world would be proud to count among its middle class.

Our chat ranged over a myriad of issues, from the quagmire in Iraq to the changing fortunes of the Super Eagles in Tunisia 2004, to the price of yam in the marketplace. "Obasanjo has ruined us", the woman of the house intoned, her voice slowly assuming a deep, elegiac tone. "Obasanjo has ruined this country. We regret the day this disaster became our president". As if on cue, the guttural signature tune of the NTA signaled the commencement of the 9'0clock news. As usual, you were the first news item. As your picture flashed across the screen, the woman picked up her spectacles, grabbed her glass of water and dashed out of the sitting room as if pursued by a powerful spirit. She would do anything to avoid seeing your face on the screen, she later confessed. She would like to enjoy whatever is left of her sleep without having to grapple with the nightmare induced by your presence.

What, you may want to ask, has made you such a persona non grata in the home of a family that happily gave you their vote in the last election? Why, how, has the President of our brave Republic moved from knight to nightmare? The answers are evident in the physical and psychological circumstances of the family in question: from the refrigerator standing decrepit in a corner, in need of a compressor, to the family car (or what used to be!) now down on the block, disabled by a knocked engine, to the progressive absence of protein in the family menu, to nerves that are as frayed as the old blinds staring languidly from the poorly screened windows.

The man of the house is a retired public servant whose pension has not been paid for about one year; his wife a business woman whose trade has been paralysed by a comatose economy. Forced to share their parlous plight are three grand children thrust into their care by parents who have not had a job for the past two years.

Mr. President, the condition of this family is emblematic of the wonders that many years of your social and economic "policies" have wrought. Many other families have already lost their homes and have been turned into the harsh, unsparing streets. Hordes of unemployed youth have been forced into armed robbery and prostitution. Many, many others have lost their sanity and become walking shadows in the marketplace. School classrooms are half-empty as desperate parents withdraw their wards for quick apprenticeship to menial trades expected to bring quick returns. The cream of our youth, the flower of the future, are going through a most corrosive degradation. Who, then, will bring about that "tomorrow" which you are so bravely given to talking about? How "fellow" are the "fellow Nigerians" you harangue in your ceaseless sermons?

Dear President, millions of Nigerians see you as the source of their problems. Millions curse you under their breadth. Millions more loudly pronounce their imprecations at the slightest opportunity. You rule over a degraded country, Mr. President; your every act has consistently contributed to that degradation. In the reckoning of most Nigerians, you are the most arrogant, most insensitive, most callous, and most self-righteous and hypocritical ruler that this unfortunate country has ever been saddled with in its hapless saga of misrule.Your words, behaviour, disposition, and general track record seem to justify these negative impressions. Consider these facts: in two years, you have hiked the price of petroleum products two times. You met a litre of petrol selling for 21 naira; it now goes for a whooping 42 naira in a few places and twice as much in many others. As if this were not enough, you topped it all with a N1.50 levy misnamed "fuel tax". You started by flaying us with whips; now you fleece us with scorpions. What good you thought would come out of these hikes, you alone in your unfathomable wisdom will ever know; you and the Mephistophelean PPPRA and your horde of "Special advisers".

Even the most addle-brained wag knows that the moment you hike the price of petroleum products in Nigeria, the prices of all goods and services experience an astronomical jump. A few samplers, Mr. President, since your perch in Aso Rock has inoculated you against the deadly harshness of our streets and the virulent fever of skyrocketing prices. Three tubers of medium-size yam costing N80 when you assumed office in 1999 now costs N300; a bag of rice which was N3,200 then now costs N4,800; a bag of cement was N550 in 1999; now it goes for N1,000.

The vast majority of those you call "fellow Nigerians" have no access to a healthful meal, decent education, adequate medical care, and affordable housing. Even at the height of Babangida's own ill-conceived, callously imposed Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), I never saw so many Nigerians starved, stressed, and literally slaughtered in the streets.

But bad as your policies are, injurious as their results have turned out to be, what most shocks "fellow Nigerians" about you is the insufferable arrogance that attends your pronouncements and actions and the tremendous disdain in which you hold the rest of us. Hiding behind the evil instrumentality of the PPPRA, you sprang the surprise of your second price hike on your "fellow Nigerians" on their very National Day (October 1, 2003) in spite of loud and passionate protests from the Nigerian people. (The first hike, your New Year gift to us, came on January 1, 2002)".

We were still reeling in the turmoil of the aftershock of the recent hike when Your Imperial Majesty decided to slam us with the "fuel tax". Without consulting the Nigerian people, without any notice to the National Assembly, your Imperial Majesty promulgated a levy, ordered the demolition of all toll gates in the country in order to give your act a fait acompli effect, then stood in regal surprise as the people groaning under your yoke erupted in desperate rage. You are reported to have squandered N360 million of our money on that misadventure.

Now that public outcry has forced you to retrace your steps, we understand plans are afoot to award the contract for the rebuilding of those same tollgates! Mr. President, would you run your personal business this way? Did you ever for one second think about us, Nigerians, hapless enough to have you as our ruler, when you were taking all those decisions that have now literally turned our lives upside down? The Nigerian people elected you President; now you have acquired a Kabiyesi (who-dare-challenge-me) posture.

In case you need be told, what you have done is a crime against the spirit and body of the Nigerian people, the type of which leaders are impeached and duly prosecuted in saner, more civilised places. No ruler should ever take the ruled for granted or treat them with such cynical disdain the way you have done us. Every decent, every reasonable person in this country feels insulted, even affronted, by your act. They are waiting for your apology and hoping that it will not be long in coming.

Dear Mr. President, my understanding is that you have taken to all these draconian, anti-people measures in order to garner some cash for a national economy already bankrupted by your political and economic policies and the insatiable greed of your fellow politicians. Consider the billions of naira your great party ("the biggest political party in Africa"!) squandered on buying votes in the last election and suborning the entire electoral system. You can't pretend not to know the collosal sums that exchanged hands in Abuja in the run-off to and during the delegates' conference that provided your ticket for a second term.

The point I am making, Mr. President, is that improvident political spending drained the national treasury and depressed the national currency just before your second term. Now, we your subjects are being asked to pay (as usual) for the criminal irresponsibility of those who have imposed themselves upon us. Nigeria did not suddenly become broke; your politicians broke Nigeria.

The second reason for the country's financial debacle is corruption, that hydra-headed monster that you and your government have said so much and done so little about. Some people say you are not corrupt personally, but such cannot be said about the political process that ensured your attainment and retention of power. And I often wonder how a sanctimonious sermoniser like you can feel so comfortable in the company of those who reek like a public latrine. For instance, during your first term, over 300 billion naira was reported to have been voted for works and transport across the country. We were assured that bad roads were about to become a thing of the past. Barely four years hence, nearly all of Nigeria's roads are still death traps while that vibrant eastern part of our country is literally detached from the rest by unmotorable stretches. Have you ever asked, as many of us are doing, what happened to the billions that were voted for works and transport? Your government plays Oliver Twist in the reverse: it robs the poor to pay the rich!

Dear President, how many more riots, how many more corpses, do you need to see in the streets before you know that your social and economic 'policies' are killing the people you vowed to protect? Deregulation. Monetisation. Privatisation. Words note more worthy for their meretricious rhyme than any humane reason.

Take deregulation as an instance. How do you "deregulate" a chaotic, import-dependent, foreign-controlled economy like ours without running into serious problems? Can you really "deregulate" what you are not in a position to "regulate" in the first place? Now that the so-called downstream sector (whatever that is supposed to mean) of the oil industry has been "deregulated", how easy has life become for the Nigerian people? Why is your emphasis always on price increase than the efficient running of Nigeria's refineries?

Those so blindly enamoured of deregulation should remember the energy crisis in the state of California in 2000 when a deregulated process precipitated extensive price-gouging by electric power companies, and the world's sixth largest economy was plunged into expensive chaos. And that happened in the USA, an ultra-developed state with a time-tested system of checks and balance! Concerning privatisation, who stands to profit by the sale of our major national holdings if not the already rich and their friends and associates?

Besides, is privatisation always the answer? Have you considered what happened to British Rail after receiving that economic dose? The IMF and World Bank nostrums being touted as panacea for our problems will only lead to greater calamities. I have yet to see one country in the so-called developing world where IMF conditionalities have resulted in a wholesome, citizen-friendly socio-economic revival.

Mr. President, we have been told time and again by you and your advisers that we should be prepared to bear the excruciating pain caused by your economic 'policies' because such pain is a prelude to the gains of future times. Shehu Shagari told us that. So did Buhari. So did Babangida. So did Abacha. Now you! Why is it that every Nigerian ruler hectors the people on the virtues of pain?

Isn't the essence, the raison d'etre, of any responsible government the alleviation of pain and the promotion of social welfare? Almost invariably, as our rulers preach their gospel of pain to the people, they are busy securing themselves, their families, and friends against the ravages of the beast so sadistically unleashed by them. Besides, what future 'gains' can accrue from the present "Obasanjonomics" with its rampart fuzziness and punitive anti-people 'philosophy'? How can the so many Nigerians perishing from today's pain become the inheritors of tomorrow's 'gain'?

President Obasanjo, wind back the tape to 1999. You rode into the government house on the wave of the tremendous goodwill of a people sorely tired of military dictatorship and its ruinous ways. Barely five years after, you have cultivated the arrogant, oppressive manners of our erstwhile masters. Pause awhile and do some stock-taking: you started off with a Poverty Aggravation Pogrom. You preach economic prudence and monetary discipline, yet squandered so much of the country's resources on wasteful, naira-gobbling projects such as COJA and CHOGM. Now the party is over, and the Nigerian people are being asked again to pay the bill. Mr. President, there is too much pain in the land.

The people over whom you rule are tired and hungry. And very angry. You may have been prevented from seeing the corpses in the streets by the tinted glass of power, the hordes of advisers and special advisers whose 'advice' has landed us in this pitiful mess: the sycophantic clergy who keep telling you that you are God-chosen to rule Nigeria.

The sermon in the streets is several pains away from the one in their books. President Obasanjo, as I said in my letter of July 3, 2003, no Nigerian ruler has ever been as lucky as you. You ruled us, first as a military dictator, and now as a civilian president. But what legacy would you like to leave behind?

What would you like to be remembered by: the gruesome unresolved political assassinations so rampant during your rule, or the dangerous abracadabra in Anambra State? The people groan under the yoke of your rule. They yearn for a caring, listening leader, not an arrogant, insensitive, know-all despot. Peep through the tinted glass of power, Mr. President. Can you see the corpses in our streets?
Osundare, Professor of English at the University of Ibadan (Nigeria), poet and prolific essayist is the author of 'Pages from the Book of the Sun: New and Selected Poems' published in November 2000, and other works, including The Eye of the Earth, and Waiting Laughters. He is the winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for 1986, and the 1991 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa. His essays and reviews have appeared previously on USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica The Newspaper. This letter was written in February 2004.

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