Obasanjo’s Letter To President Jonathan: A Problem Of The Message Or Messenger?

In my first letter to you last November my dear Dan, I told you I had a feeling my letter would surprise you not only because you certainly do not know the writer but also because you would not have expected to receive a ‘personal’ letter such as this through this open medium. I then proceeded to introduce myself as an Edo man from the Central Senatorial District (CSD) but resident and working in Bayelsa State. Let me assure you that I am not one of the many Edo people who live outside the state and have willingly relinquished their attachment to their origins.
  I am not an Edo man in the diaspora but I visit home where I am a registered voter so often that many do not realise I live in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State. This introduction, as I told you, was merely to assure you that I have followed, and will continue to follow closely, political developments in my state as much, if not more than can be expected. I am not a partisan politician but at any point in time that I have had to exercise my right to vote, I have done so not on the basis of how much mud was thrown or received by candidates and their party during campaigns but on the strength of argument on issues canvassed.

I am again writing to you to convey my deep disappointment with you over the interview you granted Daily Independent newspaper which was published on Saturday December 21, 2013.
As state chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a party which you say has ‘’plans are on to and we are going to defeat him in a free and fair election’’, you came across to me as someone who just woke up from a deep slumber and sauntered into the interview still half awake. You were not prepared for the interview and so you did not make sense at all. Please accept my apologies for my harsh judgement but what other conclusion would one reach after reading the interview? I guess you too would have come to the painful conclusion after reading it. Read that interview again if you have not already done so.

The Daily Independent is a popular national newspaper read by Edo people everywhere in the country and also on the internet. You should have realised that you were addressing your answers to Edo people in particular who, reading the interview without political binoculars, would also be condemning your rabble-rousing in the name of political opposition.

My dear Dan, you have tried very hard to make hay over the widow issue. I had praised your effort at highlighting not only the reprimand of the Benin widow by Governor Adams Oshiomhole but also the endowment fund your party launched for widows in the aftermath of that incident. You created a situation of ‘’when two elephants (politicians) fight, the ground (widows) enjoy’’.
The way the matter has ended is good for all. But taking your answer to the question on the governor’s apology, it is, to me, the height or limit of clownishness to say that ‘’one expects the governor to stand while apologising not for him to sit just like that’’. Dan, did you really say that?
You were quoted as saying that ‘’In our culture, it is the fellow who wrong another person that would be on his or her kneels begging, asking for forgiveness depending on the seriousness of the offence’’. Which culture, Dan, are you talking about? If it is Etsako culture (am not sure it is different from my Ishan or Bini culture) then you are wrong as it is a taboo for an elder to kneel for a younger one no matter the seriousness of the offence. Would you really have loved to see a governor kneeling while apologising to a widow who broke the law? The governor apologised over his reprimand which was considered by many, including himself, as overkill. While you advocate we should not make a super human out of the governor you seem not to have respect, unfortunately though, for the office of the governor. Not one Edo person will agree with you on this, Dan. Comrade Oshiomhole, love him or hate him, has shown that a governor does not have to be a super human by the deep level of humility he displayed with respect to the widow issue. You, Dan, would not, for anything in the world, show such humility.

My dear Dan, take a second look at the answers you gave to the questions on the re-election of the governor with a wide margin in all local governments in the state in July 2012 governorship election despite your claim he had been implementing ‘’oppressive policies’’ as well as on the cost of projects. I will not comment on your answers because you do not require a glorification of the warped reasoning behind them. However, it is necessary to educate Edo people on the Airport Road Project which you say is not more than seven kilometres. I have watched a documentary and read in the news that the project is not just the seven kilometres of the Airport Road proper but includes several adjoining streets off the Airport Road of which the vegetable market road you mentioned is one. I appreciate that some appreciable work has been done on roads but much more remains to be done.

But do you honestly think that it is by pointing fingers at what has not yet been done that Edo people will vote your party to power any time soon? The answer is no. You keep telling us that what is does not exist and expect that we believe you? From the tone of the questions, you should know that even Ajibola Abayomi, obviously a Yoruba, who conducted the interview did not believe you. For instance, when he asked whether you could contest the reconstruction of the road leading to your village or the renovation of the school you attended, you replied: ‘’That is share ignorance. How can they make the school I attended an issue. How can they say that? Many of them had no genuine certificates. We don’t even know the type of school they attended. It is not that the primary school was dilapidated. They didn’t rebuild it...’’ Ignorance on the part of who, Edo people? What of the road?

I am informed that you attended St. Philips Primary School, Jattu, which is now Azama Primary School and then Our Lady of Fatimah, Auchi, now Otaru Grammar School. Dan, you know that these two schools have been reconstructed and/or renovated the same way the two primary schools in Ogbona, Oboarekpe and Imakhena, have been rebuilt.

Dan, two days after Comrade Oshiomhole celebrated the fifth anniversary of his administration in the state, you called a news conference in Benion City where you told the world that despite the billions of naira spent by Comrade Adams Oshiomhole’s government in the last five years there was nothing to show except 200 metres of roads. You made this claim in the presence of, and to, Edo p eople who know that you were not telling the truth about this government. I am not in a position to know exactly how much Comrade Oshiomhole has received and spent in the last five years but I strongly believe that if you could say that there is nothing to show by the present government in five years then you could not be right about anything else.

It is either that you were hallucinating or simply being downright mischievious. You know, like every Edo man, woman and youth, that the road leading to your village, Ogbona, has been reconstructed from Auchi to River Ogio, a distance of not less than eight kilometres. Each time you travel on this road do you not feel a sense of shame that your party could not in ten years honour you with such a project? I am sure that the people of Ogbona will chase you away if you were to tell them that there is nothing to show for the billions of naira spent by Comrade Oshiomhole in the last five years. This is because they see the much that has been done by this government to turn their village as well as their lives around during the period.

You also disappointed your followers recently when you hired a small crowd of miscreants in Lagos to demonstrate at the premises of Edo House in Lagos ostensibly to press home