PATRIOTIC:An Open Letter To Our Mr President By National Chairman Of People's Democratic Movement 'Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim.

Dear Mr. President,
I write to you on behalf of my Party,
Peoples Democratic Movement, and on
behalf of the multitude of Nigerians who do
not have a voice in how your government
frames the foreign policy agenda of our
country. We believe you have the best
interest of Nigeria at heart in its relations
with the world powers but we also believe
your government needs help if it is to
recover the disappearing stature of Nigeria
as a leading player in world affairs and a
leader in the African continent. Since you
took over the mantle of leadership in 2010,
the reputation and influence of Nigeria in
world affairs has suffered an embarrassing
setback. We feel it is time you stand up to
be counted as the leader of a great country
and step forward to offer our continent
statesmanly leadership.

You have a rare opportunity to do this
when you meet on Monday September 23,
2013, with President Barack Obama of
United States of America in New York. It is
a meeting you have earned on the back of
your July visit to Beijing, which has served
as a befitting diplomatic response to the
decision of President Obama to avoid
Nigeria during his 3-nation tour of Africa in
June. With the meeting taking place on the
side of the 68th General Assembly of the
United Nations in New York, not in the
White House in Washington, your
diplomatic gamble has somewhat paid off.
As our President you have, nonetheless,
sent the signal to Washington that Nigeria
could not be ignored. You have made us
proud and I congratulate you on this
modest achievement.

However, I believe you understand that
President Obama did not avoid Nigeria in
June to spite the largest African supplier of
energy to the US and the second largest
economy on the continent. He visited
Senegal and Tanzania, after all. These
countries are not central to the strategic
interests of the United States. Nigeria is.
There must be good reasons, therefore,
why President Obama has avoided Nigeria
like a plague and, let’s face it, we all know
what those reasons are.

Nigeria under you, Mr. President, has
issues with the US and, I believe, you are
fully aware of this. It is, therefore, not
enough for you to court and earn a
meeting with the President of the United
States. It is way past time for another
photo-op. You must seize the rare
opportunity provided by the New York
meeting to address those critical issues
which continue to dog the medium and
long term future of Nigeria’s bilateral
relations with the United States. Although
I’m sure you have a list of topics to discuss
in New York, I would like to suggest four
key items which should feature among
them.

Rising Levels of Corruption in Nigeria

Corruption has plagued our institutions
and has embedded itself in our governance
and society as the routine, standard modus
operandi for transactions amongst public
and private entities alike. Despite marginal
improvement, Transparency International’s
Corruption Perceptions Index still ranked
Nigeria as the 35th most corrupt nation in
the world in 2012. The Government, the
Police, and the Judiciary are perceived as
the most corrupted institutions in Nigeria
today.

Many of Nigeria’s leaders have fallen victim
to the ease with which unsavory business is
conducted, losing sight of the goals of
democracy and communal progress that
our Founding Fathers and millions of
Nigerians hoped would become an
impenetrable foundation and guiding light
for Nigeria’s future. In order to regain our
vision as a country, our leaders must
change their mindset of greed and
complacency that has only managed to
subject the Nigerian people to rising levels
of poverty, insecurity and misfortune as
these have combined to alter the
perception of Nigeria and its role, from the
regional leader that it used to be to the
semi-pariah nation that it is today.

The United States and other international
allies have actively collaborated with and
offered assistance to Nigeria in its fight
against corruption, especially between 2002
and 2009. However, its enthusiasm and that
of our international allies began to wane
when business-as-usual began to creep
back, culminating in your grant of pardon
to the convicted former Governor of
Bayelsa State. That action has robbed you
of the moral capital you need to fight
corruption in your government and in the
rest of the nation at large. Before you meet
President Obama in New York, it would do
Nigeria a world of good if you would
reverse that pardon and then, when you
meet him, renew the commitment of your
government to a genuine fight against
corruption beyond meaningless media
sound bites. For if corruption continues to
grow at the current rate, there will be no
hope of confronting and conquering
insecurity, unemployment, piracy and the
host of other afflictions that obstruct the
nation’s growth, prosperity and progress.

Insecurity

Last week, about One Hundred and Fifty
innocent Nigerians were massacred in the
small town of Beni Shek in Yobe State
where a State of Emergency you declared is
still in force. Similarly, Ombatse, a
traditional religious cult in Nasarawa State,
which has been implicated in the massacre
of over One Hundred on-duty security
personnel in May, has again allegedly
ransacked and burnt down a whole
community while killing scores of innocent
citizens who looked up to the Government
for protection. Furthermore the uncertainty
surrounding last week’s shootings in Abuja
points towards a crisis of confidence and
trust. In a time of deep-rooted and
widespread insecurity it becomes far too
easy for corrupted officials and leaders to
conduct operations of self-interest under
the auspices of security and counter-
insurgency.

Spats of violence, including attacks on
innocent school children across the north,
the deliberate and extra-judicial murder of
civilians in Baga, rampant kidnapping,
armed robbery and other instances of
unspeakable violence across the county,
may have led Vision of Humanity’s Global
Peace Index to rank Nigeria at 148 out of
162 countries, using violent crime, political
terror, terrorist activity, and political
instability as justification for the failing
marks. The Fund for Peace casts a shadow
over Nigeria’s prospects as a successful
state, placing the country in the “high alert”
category of prospective failed states. If
Nigeria continues on its current trajectory,
there may be no state remaining for you to
preside over before very long. It is in
nobody’s best interest to permit this to
happen.

With all these happening under your
watch, Nigeria’s insecurity ought be at the
top of the checklist of items you will be
tabling in your meeting in New York.

Nigeria needs material and technical
support to create a workable and
sustainable public security framework,
including the establishment of genuine
counter-insurgency measures, which will
have the winning of hearts of minds as its
centrepiece, not just the deployment of
brute force. The combination of high-level
corruption, the disastrous state of our
infrastructure, jobless growth and the
record levels of unemployment currently at
an astonishing 22% with 38% youth
unemployment, are the main drivers of
insecurity and violence in our country. We
should be humble enough, given the
debilitating political quagmire in which we
have found ourselves, and the lack of
capacity exhibited by the government which
you lead, to seek enduring partnerships
with our international allies before they
eventually write us off as too far gone to
be salvaged.

Intensification of Crude Oil Theft in the Delta

Just last week, Chatham House, a London-
based think tank, released an unflattering
report on crude oil theft in Nigeria, with
estimates of up to 150,000 barrels of oil
stolen each day, costing us upwards of $6
billion in annual revenue. This is what the
respected think tank has to say:

Nigerian crude is being stolen on an
industrial scale. Some of what is stolen is
exported. Proceeds are laundered through
world financial centres and used to buy
assets in and outside Nigeria. In Nigeria,
politicians, military officers, militants, oil
industry personnel, oil traders and
communities profit, as do organised
criminal groups. The trade also supports
other transnational organised crime in the
Gulf of Guinea.

The figure of 150,000 barrels per day is the
lowest that has been placed, so far, in the
public domain. Other figures coming out of
the industry, including from Shell, indicate
that as much as 300,000 barrels of crude,
worth almost a billion dollars a month, is
stolen everyday. It is inconceivable this
industrial scale theft of our crude oil is
taking place without the active
collaboration and connivance of political
leaders at the highest level as well as other
agents of the state. In the last year,
incidents of piracy and fuel theft have
increased so much so that piracy in the
Gulf of Guinea has surpassed that in the
waters off of Somalia.

The United States and other international
allies also suffer the consequences of oil
theft and piracy and have a keen interest in
assisting Nigeria to tackle this issue head
on. Nigeria needs to ratchet up its
collaboration with the United States on
anti-piracy measures, using the East African
model, to eliminate piracy in the Gulf of
Guinea and help us save much-needed
revenue. The precipitate decline in Nigeria’s
oil receipt is unsustainable and could spell
doom for our country in our time of need.

The declining prospects for free and fair elections.

Which brings me to the issue of free and
fair elections and smooth transition to a
democratically elected government in
Nigeria in 2015. There are ominous signs,
Mr. President, that desperation to stay in
power by agents of your party is already
pushing our country to the edge of the
precipice. Statements such as “2015 is
already in the pocket of PDP” is not helping
matters in the face of growing discontent
with and desire to change the face of
politics and governance in Nigeria as we
know them since 1999.

When your party assumed power in 1999,
the level of poverty in Nigeria was bad
enough at 52%. Today, about three in every
four Nigerians live in abject poverty and
above one in every four is unemployed.
There is fear in the land arising from rising
insecurity with about 300 Nigerians killed
by violent means in this month of
September alone. All this is happening
when Nigeria is recording record numbers
of private jets purchased by people with
questionable means, some of whom are
fairly close to you. Poverty, unemployment,
insecurity and corruption are bad enough.
It would be disastrous if we add bad
elections to this combination by denying
Nigerians their right to choose leaders of
their choice in 2015.

As you and President Obama meet in New
York, I am certain your host will expect to
hear reassuring words from you about the
sanctity of the ballot in the forthcoming
elections and a pledge from you that your
party will not use state resources, including
security personnel, to perpetuate itself.
While it was possible to bend the rules and
confer advantage on your party in the past,
the emergence of new alternative political
parties has profoundly altered the political
landscape. It would be truly
transformational if you will use the
platform of your meeting to reassure
President Obama and the international
community in the after-meeting press
briefing or Communique that Nigeria will
follow in the footsteps of Ghana, Senegal
and Mali in the quality of the election it will
hold.

I wish Mr. President a successful meeting
in New York and pray you return home
safely, with renewed energy to kickstart the
transformation which you promised
Nigerians two and a half years ago.

— Bashir Yusuf Ibrahim, National
Chairman Peoples Democratic
Movement.

Lol...this man sounds so PATHETIC or PATRIOTIC...?which one...?hehe.

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