Open Letter to His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar by Onyeka Nwelue
You still address yourself as His Excellency, which is palpably laughable. I will keep that aside and focus on what I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while. I don’t know you personally, so I don’t hate you. I remember you were Vice President when I was still a child. Since then, you have tried to become President. Yours dreams haven’t come true and I am very, very certain they will never come true. If you become President, I will go into exile; I will travel far away to Panama and live there until you finish deceiving Nigerians.
You are no visionary person, sir. That doesn’t hurt, does it? A man like you always talking about creating jobs and you use the word ‘young’ for Nigerian youths all the time to blackmail them. You are always asking young people to throw questions at you on Twitter to discuss job creation and many of them are very polite and respectful. They don’t get angry with you; they don’t think about the many years you spent as Vice President and now want to be the President of a country that has no structure; a country where its graduates come out and look like nincompoops because practically, they are incompetent. You have ABTI-American University, sir. That university, which charges tuition fees that are way bigger than what are obtainable in universities abroad where teaching methodology has completely been modernised.
I am not saying you are a bad person. I don’t like you as a liar. Politicians, generally, are liars. I have a list of them; the ones who lie way better than me. It confuses me how we can’t just think straight and actually list out the names of the people who have collectively destroyed this nation and yet, make us believe that they are the only things that we need. How can? How can we need someone like you when you only start talking because you need votes? How can we need someone like you who is always talking about how many jobs you have created? You are a very narcissistic politician! (What politician isn’t narcissistic?!) You listen to yourself lie and you believe your own lies.
I was not paid to write this, but what ignited this fire in me was your Tweet: “Young people of Nigeria, if you want to make a difference in your country, you must commit to vote!” Oh my days! You sound like you just came back from another planet and that we’ve not been voting? We voted you in and you spent 8 years, doing nothing. Imagine being voted in to become the Vice President of the Giant of Africa, where there are no trains? No metro system? No good public transportation system? No proper internet? No access to quality education, because people like you, in a bid to clamour for political support, will go to deliver some speech at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, where students can’t find seats to sit down during lectures and where lecturers sweat while they are teaching a jampacked class.
For me, I don’t seek for anything from you. I have dined with people like you and I made a mistake by not using long spoons. All the young people who use generator sets and can’t even iron their clothes showing support for you are shameless nitwits and should query this man who keeps chasing his shadows. For the most part, we cannot sell our souls to people like you, sir. How passionate are you really to lead a country you couldn’t lead as Vice President? Trust me, you were not powerless as Vice President! Olusegun Obasanjo did not castrate you. You were just not willing to bring any change; you were intent on acquiring massive personal wealth, which I encourage every well-meaning Nigerian to acquire. Get rich and lie to poor people and deceive them. If people like you are not made away with in Nigeria by young people in Nigeria, we will live in this kind of society for the rest of our lives.
I beg of you to stop ranting on Twitter and Facebook like, retire from politics, get a life, go spend it with your money, enjoy all the wealth you’ve amassed, which I’m jealous of, but which you’d say you worked hard to get. But this is what Don Marquis said: “When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: ‘Whose?‘”
Thank you so much for finding time to read this, if you actually did. And I don’t look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Onyeka Nwelue
Onyeka Nwelue is currently Visiting Lecturer at Hong Kong University’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures.
Onyeka Nwelue is a Nigerian writer. He just won a 2013 Prince Claus Travel Grant to travel to East Africa. He is also the President of La Cave Musik (www.lacavemusik.com), a record label based in Paris, France.
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