By Pastor Dele Ikeorha
Your Excellency,
It is with a heavy but hopeful and respectful heart that I write you this open letter, believing that the democrat who, along with us in NADECO in those dark days of military rule, dreamt of a democracy that is not one in name or a caricature Fela sang about, but the living force whose faith we expected to usher in the long-awaited New Nigeria and its greatness.
I may be wrong, but I must say that the majority of Nigerians, rather than trust in your historical democratic credentials, treat them as, indeed, a thing of the past, and rather believe that you are the Jagaban, the master of the art of election rigging. This is the outcome of my political barometer research.
I have no reason to believe it, nor to doubt it. As a pastor who is also a politician, “by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Sometime in 2011, I contested for the office of Senate, FCT, as you did, and as my good friends Senators Uba D
Sani, Shehu Sani, and Ugochimere did for their constituencies. Though mine, unlike those of these friends of mine and yours, was not successful.
Notwithstanding, I have continued to perform my role, as much as God will permit, in the civic, values, philanthropic, watchman, and public domain of civil society.
While writing my new book, The January 1966 Coup Revisited: Fact, Myth and Reality, it dawned on me that almost all the 18 causes that plunged Nigeria into that era of decay — political, structural, and civil decay: widespread institutional corruption, transactional politics, electoral malpractice and electoral crisis, including destabilization of political parties; inherently unbalanced federal structures; deep-seated elite struggles and ethnic weaponization; resistance to feudal veto power and regional oligarchy; naive military and civilian idealism and romantic socialist and capitalist visions; administrative engineering of command and political office vacuums; gatekeeper complicity; exploitation of institutional loopholes; breakdown of military hierarchy and radical middle-tier defiance; demographic friction and compromised multi-ethnic quota system; the weaponization of internal intelligence and communication; hostile or ambivalent international variables and interventions; clandestine role of foreign intelligence outposts and governments; preservation of neocolonial economic dominance; jihad fears and resistance to caliphate proselytization; religious friction and theological blowback; and counter-narrative complex — remain rife with us today.
As I wrote in Revisited: “The eighteen catalysts did not operate in isolation. They formed a denser, interlocking matrix of causation — political corruption feeding ethnic resentment, ethnic resentment fueling religious paranoia, which in turn justified military intervention, which in turn triggered foreign manipulation, ensuring that the original goals were permanently defeated.” pp. 7, 15, 31.
Let me be upfront about my political leanings. While I admire you as a politician, a strategist like the late Gen. Yar’Adua, Awo, and others, I am not an admirer of the APC, which I consider a party whose foundational praxis was based on a rigorous handshake between Muslims of the North and the South West; nor did I vote for you in the last election, and I would not do so in the coming election, not for any personal animos, but because wonderful as your policies are, they have plunged the Nigerian masses into the sea of pain,poverty and pity; in a world of hunger, hatred and harm. You can choose this as an excuse to ignore this warning, but that would be perilous. Just remember you did not vote for me in 2011 too, however illogical that may sound, irrespective of what Bayo Onanuga may say.
The greatest danger among these catalysts is the trigger of electoral malpractice. Hence, it is fundamental that, to protect your legacy as a democrat, you must do all you can to ensure free, credible, and fair elections in 2027. It is only this that can avert the danger of Nigeria plunging back into the Pyrrhic cycles of October 1965 and its aftermath. I trust your wisdom. You will make the right choice.
Your Comrade,
Pastor Dele Ikeorha wrote in from Abuja
