Dear Mr. President,
I have always wanted to write you a letter, but then I will convince myself that tomorrow will be better and my daddy will take care of things. That was 10years ago and tomorrow is here and nothing has changed. How do you sleep at night knowing that innocent youths were butchered during the elections and all that has been done is “moments of silence” for the lost souls. How are you sleeping while the families of those youth corps members cry, they had no chance to say goodbye to their loved ones……
Come take a walk with me, let’s pretend we are friends and walk on our roads, is it that you don’t drive on these roads? Or don’t you at least have people who drive or supervise the roads? Let’s imagine those road transport workers/travelers who have to be on these roads day and night risking their lives to armed robbers and thieves…… My Nigeria is not a safe place anymore, is it the trucks parked by the road sides causing fatal accidents because of no warning signs? Just the other day, we lost a young vibrant artiste who drove into a parked trailer with no parking sign.
What is the road safety commission doing about these? Hold my hands my friend, do you have your family in this country? All of them studied here? How many ministers, senators, governors, government officials send their children to school abroad? Why do they send them there when we have schools here? Oh I see….. our schools are messed up. Lecturers are always going on strike for increment of salaries and you have refused to give them, but you spend over N500billion renovating government official houses yearly, what the National assembly spends yearly is more than what is put in for development of our nation and you say it will be better tomorrow, our tomorrow is here. We are crying, we have sang,
we have tweeted, we have died,
we have suffered, we have begged you, we are on our knees, we want power,
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH……
LIGHT UP NIGERIA!!!!!!! They are so many of us who can relate to this, finished school after 6years (instead of 4) ,done our youth service but still unemployed. Where are the job opportunities? What system supports our innovative ideas? We are the leaders of tomorrow, that’s what I was told 25 years ago, yet we still have ex-presidents greedy for the presidential seat again. While taking this walk look me in the eyes, can you see how scared I am, I am scared of my children’s future. Do I want to bring children to face the problems my father and I suffered? For how long will these strife and sufferings end? The fights, the darkness, the hunger, the stress, the mindless killing, the lack of security, when? When will it end?
Let me ask, who do you pray to before you sleep? What do you tell him you will do about our country? And do fulfill these promises or you find better ways to launder money into your foreign accounts to secure the future of your own generation. Isn’t that what you dream about? Or if I may ask do you dream about other children?
You walk with your head held up high knowing very well about the conflict in the Niger Delta and the Nigeria sectarian violence, the lack of facilities and the brain drain in our health system which increases the death rate in our society….. Are you still walking with me Mr. President? What exactly are you doing about the piracy in the entertainment industry, the oil and gas industry?
How do you feel about poverty in Nigeria? W
ill Nigeria ever get it right? Why can’t we get the right microeconomic foundations that can spur wealth, prosperity and increase productivity? How do you dream knowing very well that a mother hasn’t been able to feed her baby as she depends on her 18,000naira minimum wage salary? And then there is the family with 3 children and they can’t feed. What do you feel about the homeless children on the streets? Are you proud of yourself when you look in the mirror that as a father, the rights of your children are taken away?
I am a proud Nigerian,
and will always be one….. But I don’t want the first word my daughter to say is “NEPA!!!!!” I wonder what the first lady has to say about the women like her and her daughter who are on the streets selling their bodies for money because they are illiterates or don’t have a job but have to feed their sick mothers and take care of her younger ones.
There are so many questions to be asked, but Mr. President I will leave you to your conscience but we are not dumb, neither are we blind, use our taxes and oil to make Nigeria the best it can be. OUR FUTURE IS NOW.
