My able President, I hope you read

Congratulations on your recent elevation, against all odds, to the enviable position of the substantive President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; following the death of your principal, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, through illness in the hands of his family members, as represented by Turai, and his best friends, better know to the public as the cabal. The heights which you have attained within the short time you entered into elective politics with no resources, in Nigeria, could only have been possible for someone whose life his maker had designed as a special purpose vehicle. Once more, congratulations. My dear president, fears had been expressed in different quarters following the illness of the now late president, particularly in the North, even before your up-grading by the National Assembly to the level of an Acting President, about the possibility of your contesting the 2011 election against the understanding reached by the founding fathers of your party that, the office of the president would alternate between the south and the north, at every eight year interval and which led to the withdrawal of all interested candidates from the north from the presidential race of 1999 and 2003. Remember, Atiku, with the backing of the governors would have run against Obasanjo, his boss, in 2003 but for the understanding which he respected. This agreement, even to the most ardent critics of your party, the PDP, is plausible, for the political good of the country. This fear, my Excellency has only heightened following your inevitable assumption of office, as the president with your evasive statement concerning your political future and the multiplication of individuals and group purporting to support an extension of your reign beyond May, 2011, including statement credited to the remnants of your party executive that the agreement was not cast in stones. As for your interview with Christiana Amanpour of CNN and comments here and there, relating to time and task which has been overly interpreted by analyst to be a pointer to your interest in the next election, I consider them necessary in order to keep your appointees, governors and god fathers in check. It is this ambivalence on your part has kept the streets from over-flowing with bloods of Nigerian youths, fighting to cancel out the support base of one another’s presidential candidate. I do not believe that it is desirable for you to stay beyond the May 29th, 2011, terminal date of this administration. Your achievements, between now and then or plans for the growth and development of the nation, notwithstanding. Your maker, the Almighty God who sent you into the political arena did not do so with the intention of making you just another governor or president. No. As I have stated earlier in this piece, he sent you to Nigerians as a special purpose vehicle to accomplish certain things—like reforming INEC, fighting corruption in Ibori’s court, promising to do away with the zonal leaders of your party’s rigging machine— that ordinarily, a campaign based on them would never have taken you near Aso Rock. They are issues which required that someone told the political fixers of this country lies on your behalf while you stood aloof, waiting for the leadership staff, sometime in the future when that person— Alamieyeseigha and Yar'Adua — must have been appropriately rewarded for their leg work. As a special purpose vehicle, you have been commissioned to deliver, primarily, an election that will be free of all the malpractices associated with previous elections including the minor ones of the June 12th elections that, has been adjudged to be the freest and fairest ever, in Nigeria till date. The one year to the end of the regime that God in his infinite wisdom decided to transfer power to you, is not for you to attempt to cover all the potholes or construct trans-high ways across the country. No. Neither is it for you to wipe out fuel scarcity nor right all the wrongs against the Niger-Delta area, by successive regimes. And for sure, it is not for you to invest in the provision of the all important electricity. In other words, the economy is secondary! Everything else is secondary to the task for which exactly a year—enough time to do this—has been provided. Your task in this period is to lead the people of this otherwise great country out of bondage by leaning heavily on the National Assembly and the Governors, who control their state houses of Assemblies like a parastatal, to change the fundamental book of engagement called the constitution; plus the electoral Act! To do this, all need aid—funds and the EFCC— have been provided. Good enough, those holding the people hostage, god fathers and fixers of results are hands and feet deep in corruption and indiscipline of all known shades. You must return the people’s confidence the electoral processes and outcome. The cliché, garbage in, garbage out, must hold true for the ballot box, in Nigeria. But you cannot do this if you become a player rather than an umpire, as you would be inclined to use your position, however the assurance and confidence the people might want to repose in you based on you current performance, to compromise certain aspect of the process, starting from your party’s nominations. You would do this because you know, too well, that faith alone in the people would not be enough to ensure victory. Once you throw you hat in the ring, the cure all be all electoral Act currently being worked upon by the National Assembly would have ceased to have general meaning beyond that you allow it. Another important matter is the fight against indiscipline and corruption. So far, there seems to have been a somewhat re-setting of the fight against this twin cancerous phenomenon with the capture of the fugitive, Ibori in Dubai, the trial of Ogbulafor and the voluntary resignation of Adamu Adullahi, as secretary of your party’s BOT and the sprinkling of dramatic changes, there, there. All this would be lost and even return with a vengeance, upon you declaration. Remember, the holy book stated that when an evil spirit is driven out of a person, that after hovering around for a while and finding no place to reside, it would seek to return to it original abode, and if it finds it ready for it, it would not just return alone but invite seven others to share the accommodation with it. Already, some persons who ought to be keeping a date with the EFCC have already, somehow, found their way into the, political reform group; a group who demand from your party, I dare infer, would help in deepening democracy, if granted. It is near impossible to remain indifferent to a process that has the possibility of returning an unfavourable outcome, if not engineered. Your immediate boss, late Yar'Adua, for all his simplicity and honesty could not, as has been revealed since you assumed his role, resist the temptation of packing the national executive of you party full with purchase-able men, for personal gains. My president, I believe that the good LORD did not allow you stay beyond two years in Bayelsa, as the executive governor because he was protecting you from the corruptive tendencies that ultimately marks virtually all such prolonged ruler-ship, which would have marred your chances of becoming what you are, today. The temptation to do one “runs” would have been too great to resist and that would have denied you this opportunity. My Excellency, I believe that you are a gentleman and as such, you will respect agreement—written or otherwise—as entered into by the founding fathers of your party, concerning the presidency. Every opportunity is not your chance to break-through, however advantageous your current position make it seem Just hand-over and wait for the next task. It might be in Yenagoa, as a councillor, the African Union or the United Nation. May the Good LORD continue to be, your shepherd. Amen.