Your Aspiration, A Joke Taken Too Far

An Open Letter to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (1)

Like most Nigerians, I woke up on Monday April 11, 2022, to the news of your declaration via social media to run for the Office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and in effect succeed your current boss, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) with whom you have piloted the affairs of our beleaguered nation for nearly seven years.

After several weeks of procrastination, I must admit that your decision to jump on the train of Presidential ‘wannabes’ did not come to me as a surprise. Indeed as the sitting Vice President, it is only natural that you would aspire to go a step higher in your political career by seeking to be President. The impropriety of your action and the likely consequence for the nation is what has prompted this letter.

Let me confess straight on that I have a lot of respect for you as a Pastor of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Law Professor, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, former Attorney-General of Lagos State and now Vice President of the world’s most populous black nation. I must seriously object however to your latest adventure which in my candid view is nothing short of an inglorious attempt to rub salt on the injury of ordinary Nigerians.

As a Deacon in the Redeemed Church of God (RCCG) where you also serve as Senior Pastor, I owe it a duty to my God and conscience to tell you the truth no matter how bitter. I am disappointed that you have chosen to live in deceit with the thinly veiled suggestion in your broadcast that the reason for your aspiration is to build on the legacies of your predecessors including of course the incumbent President, Muhammadu Buhari.

Given the sorry state of affairs in the country as we speak, I do not see how you can possibly build on what is fast unravelling before our very eyes as a ruinous legacy. Indeed as head of Buhari’s economic team which has foisted untold hardship on millions of Nigerians in the last seven years, I would have expected you to retire quietly and honorably from politics to private life next year having failed so miserably in your assigned responsibility.

Under your supervision, nearly 80 million Nigerians are reputed to have slipped below the poverty line. It is thanks to you and the man you want to succeed that our good old Naira is today hardly worth the paper on which it is printed. The Trader Moni Initiative for which you became the poster boy has long been exposed as a fraud designed merely to curry the votes of gullible Nigerians in the run up to the 2019 Presidential election.

Even the school feeding programme supposedly targeted at taking 10 million children off the streets and back to school has become a cesspit of corruption and maladministration under this same government. Needless to remind you that the administration of which you are a prominent menber rode into power on the basis of promises which in very many instances have become a mirage.

We will fight corruption, tackle insecurity and grow the economy you told Nigerians. In which of these key areas can you in good conscience say your administration has come good despite being in power since 2015. From Portharcourt to Kano, Lagos to Sokoto, Enugu to Maiduguri, Nigeria has become a huge killing field where criminal gangs and outlaws like Fulani herdsmen/Bandits, Boko Haram insurgents, kidnappers and ritualists operate with reckless Impunity.

The recent attack on a Kaduna bound train from Abuja and the murder in cold blood of 9 innocent Nigerians including three lawyers and a young female doctor and the kidnapping of about 150 others by terrorists is testimony to the long held belief in some quarters that your administration has failed in all ramifications to protect the lives and properties of citizens prompting the usually patronising and garrulous Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El Rufai to fire an ultimatum in the direction of Abuja.

I must admit that the administration which you represent has recorded some modest achievements in the development of infrastructure, especially in areas such as rail and road transportation for which you have mounted every available platform to inform and even educate us while seeking to hold every past government responsible.

Such achievements have nonetheless paled into insignificance with the high level of insecurity that has rendered the movement of people, products and services across the nation a perilous task. The situation has degenerated so much so that even Daddy G.O was forced to voice out his concerns last week on the situation in Kaduna while the government you seek continuity for conveniently looks the other way.

Like me, I am sure most Nigerians cannot wait to see the back of the Buhari administration. In more ways than one, you are a sad reminder of an administration whose record of incompetence and maladministration has long assumed legendary status. This is why I personally consider your declaration to run for the Office of President not only as a huge joke but a misconceived venture by your hangers-on and the so called Aso Rock Cabal if at all they have a hand in this.

Those who argue in your favour that you can only do less in an administration in which the President has absolute powers are merely being clever by half. More than any other Vice President in the history of civilian rule in Nigeria, the President has given you ample opportunity and space to exercise power in the best interest of Nigerians and you have failed.

Rather than heap all the blame for the failure of the present administration on President Muhammadu Buhari alone, it is my candid opinion that you as his number two man cannot by any stretch of the imagination be excused from what is obviously a collective failure upon which you cannot seek to build but be held liable and accountable in the fullness of time.

This is my submission on the current political evolvement in our dear Country, Nigeria.

BARR.BOLA AIDI,ESQ
An Abuja- based, Corporate Attorney& Notary Public,
Writes from Inu-Odi Royal Courtyard,Okela Quarters, Ikare-Akoko,Ondo-State.