I
am sorry for advising you seven years ago not to struggle to leave Nigeria for
America. You had shared with me the
entire trauma you faced in the hands of VISA racketeers and fraudsters. I had then told you that I do not see why a
Nigerian with our national, natural and physical endowments should put himself
or herself in the hassle of leaving such a huge and rich country to go and
scramble for the position of a dishwasher in the Americas.
I
must apologize for my myopia. I only saw
the potential. I did not consider the
practicability of transforming the huge potential into real values for the
encouragement of human existence, strivings and thriving. I took it for granted that it would work out.
I
failed to consider the quality and character of people responsible for managing
the potential that Nigeria had. I had
thought that human beings have an opportunity to run and be running these
affairs. I must have been deceived by
the return to democracy and a foolish thought I had that with someone like
General Olusegun Obasanjo as president, the country was in for a good run. My calculations hinged on the following now
dumb facts:
·
General Olusegun
Obasanjo fought a war and put his life at risk to keep this country one. He was both notorious for his brutal
destruction of the divisive Biafran people for attempting to destroy the entity
called Nigeria. His patriotic fervor was
not in doubt for Nigeria.
·
General Obasanjo has
been head of state of Nigeria before. I
had considered that his attitude towards corruption would be as vehement as his
efforts in destroying the Biafran secession and its people. I was expecting that with Obasanjo in the
saddle, there is no need worrying about corruption and what it has done to us
today with him in the leader of the most corrupt nation on earth.
·
I had calculated that
having been Head of State before and knowing that no amount of money you can
steal from public office can make you wealthy, he would act differently, how
wrong I was.
·
I had calculated that
coming from the dead to rule the country again (having been condemned to death
by the dictator Sani Abacha), he would lead Nigeria to the glory of God or at
least rule with the fear of God, how naively trusting I was.
Now
that I see all my thinking to be futile, I am ashamed to even be associated
with this country and I am so pissed that I stopped you from following your
heart to search for greener pastures when you had your vision of what is best
for you.
Forgive
me for interfering with your life. I am
so embarrassed about it all now as even in my old age, I consider myself having
wasted my old life here. I am sorry for
affecting your young with an old school thought that Nigeria is country. It is clear to me now that it has never been
a country and would never be.
It
is more insulting because the potential is so great. It makes it more embarrassing when you
consider that in this country, we earn from oil, in one year, enough dollar
money to fund our annual budget for three years. This is not talking about the fact that what
we earn annually from oil alone is lost through oil theft and bunkering orchestrated
by the political and armed forces hierarchy.
The
political class is so enamored in this binge of stealing and looting of the
national treasury. They are so consumed
by looting of the treasury that they give no thought to the fact that what the
Nigerian public need from them is just build roads and power infrastructure.
The
political class have forgotten of two of their colleagues where were ministers
and highly ranked military officers who committed suicide when the lame duck
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) came calling to ask about what
they did with budgetary allocations they were supposed to have used to develop
their department and ministries which they stole and converted to private use. It is probably a great thing in Nigeria to
steal and commit suicide leaving the resources to your family instead of
serving honourably.
Perhaps,
a docile citizenship that live their lives waiting for the opportunity to join
the stealing and looting bandwagon seems to me to be our worst enemy.
I
am more appalled today that the only reason why people are writing to Jonathan
is because the farms that came back to life in 1999 has died again with all the
farms in Ota, Abeokuta and Ibadan being closed down due to repercussion (ary)
fraud by the people employed as stewards who had stolen all the investment in
the company. Well, I hope they are not
doing anything against those farm boys because it is the same stewardships that
we gave to them through which seventeen or is it sixteen billion dollars American
were stolen without providing a candle in the name of electricity projects
during the period 1999-2007.
Whatever,
please, accept my profound apology for not seeing as much you saw seven years
ago when you were frantically working and falling victim of VISA fraudsters and
racketeers in your bid to leave Nigeria for the United States of America.
Regards.
Francis
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