Letter to General Buhari by Prof Akinloye

First of all, I congratulate you warmly for winning the nomination of
your party for the presidency of Nigeria.

Though you and I are different in ethnicity and religion, we have many
important things in common. I am a few years older than you – which
means that if you and I had been Yoruba boys born in the same Yoruba
town or village, we would have belonged to about the same age-grade
Association ( with us Yoruba, age-grade loyalty is traditionally a
very important factor of life). Moreover, you and I were young
Nigerians in an era, the 1950s, when our up-and coming country of
Nigeria was a source of great pride to its citizens, and an emerging
titan eagerly awaited by most informed people all over the world.



The three regions of our federation (East, North and West) were
engaged in an ambitious rivalry for progress and for improvements in
the quality of life of our people. They were able to do that and
achieve considerable successes because our constitutional structure
gave them much leeway to manage their own affairs within the common
Nigerian family. We arrived at independence in 1960 believing that our
country was set on the path to becoming the blackman’s world power of
modern times.

Unhappily, now that you and I are in our seventies, there is nothing
left of our country’s ambitions and pride – indeed, there is hardly
anything left of our country itself. Relentlessly crooked up,
violated, robbed and depleted since 1960, our Nigeria seems now to be
stumbling towards its demise.

As you prepare for your election, I decided to write you this open
letter concerning our country, because I know you will understand the
pain and expectations behind my words. The purpose of most of
Nigeria’s rulers since 1960 has been to weaken and even destroy
regional and local initiatives in order to gather all power, control
and influence together at the federal center. Their success in doing
that has enabled them to remove the management of development far away
from our people, and to institute at the federal centre a viciously
corrupt, wasteful and incompetent monstrosity. Reduced to the status
of beggar clients of the federal robber barons, the state governments,
as well as the local governments, collapsed and fell in line as
submissive incompetents and mini-robbers.

In the process, real and productive enterprise quickly declined among
our people, as the best and most ambitious rushed to join the ranks of
the sharers of fraudulently acquired wealth from the public coffers.
Our schools and universities, our public service, our police force,
our military, our judiciary, all our governmental agencies (electoral
commission, secret service, central bank, ports service, immigration
service, public examination bodies, etc) – all collapsed under the
weight of crooked control, massive corruption and generalized
disloyalty. Poverty descended mightily into our country and became the
lot of the overwhelming and increasing majority of our people. Our
government itself admits that, today, about 70% of our citizens live
in “absolute poverty” and that that percentage keeps increasing. With
the growing poverty have escalated horrific crimes, a culture of
dishonesty, a rush of our youths to Salafist fundamentalist terrorism,
and mass flights of the educated to other lands – all of which are
compounding the poverty.

From your well-known record as a leader of our country, I know that
you are not only aware of these things, but that, in common with many
members of our generation, you are seriously pained by them. I confess
that I was very angry with you during your brief stint as military
ruler, 1983-5. First, you seemed to me to be power-drunk at the
time—because you made no distinction between the corrupt who had been
stealing and sharing public money under Shagari and those who were
known to have been resisting the robbery. I belonged to the frontline
of senators who were well known to have, on the floor of the Senate,
resisted the mass corruption, and yet your military government
detained me (and many like me), and I languished for four months in
prison without any accusation–even without being asked any question by
any official.

And then, you and Idiagbon expended most of your obviously shining
capabilities in pursuing nebulous and amateurish programmes like WAI
(War Against Indiscipline), when what our country really needed was
(after you had fiercely shot down corruption as you did) to massively
divert our enormous oil revenues into investments in the lives of our
people–through programmes for expansion and diversification of
education, modern job skills development, entrepreneurial development,
small business development, promotion of modern farming, policies for
improving the quality and reputation of our labour force and thereby
attracting investments and businesses into our country, policies for
promotion of exports, etc. Put a people to work and persistently
multiply the economic opportunities available to them, and the
attraction to prosperity through competitive enterprise will gradually
suppress indiscipline in their land. Fanciful programmes like WAI can
have no lasting benefit or future – as I hope you must know by now.
That is why the man who ousted you, Babangida, was able quite easily
to wipe out all the patriotic gains of your regime.

Furthermore, I though t it was a pity that you did not appear to
recognize that the over-centralization that was being given to our
federation was the foundation of our ills as a country. You were wrong
in thinking that punishing the corrupt leaders would destroy
corruption abidingly. What is needed is to change the system into
which corruption has been built. In our country’s case, we needed (and
we need) to reduce the magnitude of our federal government and empower
our state and local governments, which are nearer the people, to bear
most of the burden of development. Then we need to give recognition
and respect to our various nationalities in structuring the federation
– which should mean that our larger nations would each constitute a
state, and contiguous groups of our smaller nationalities would be
assisted to form states, just as the Indians sensibly and profitably
did in the 1960s.

By refusing to go that route, Nigeria has abysmally depressed its
nationalities. For instance, my Yoruba nation came into Nigeria in
1914 as easily the fastest modernizing nationality in Black Africa;
and we entered into independence with Nigeria in 1960 as the
development front-liner and pace-setter in Africa. Today, we are a
battered, poor, and disoriented nation, and most of our achievements
have been wrecked, thanks to our being part of a Nigeria that destroys
its peoples. Every other Nigerian nationality has similar stories to
tell. My brother, I am, by nature and by upbringing, averse to merely
lamenting an evil development; I act to change it. My potential urge,
even as I write this, is to exert myself with others like me towards
pulling my Yoruba nation out of Nigeria if Nigeria will not change
course – and that is something that we Yoruba are perfectly capable to
achieve if we are pushed to start upon it. And the same is true of
some other persons and nations. In short, let’s not ignore or minimize
the danger of Nigeria’s dissolution.

I know you have what it takes to change and save Nigeria. I wish you
luck in your election – and I wish Nigeria luck