An open epistle to Ebele Jonathan

BY ADEYEMI ADELEYE

Dear Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, though I was one of those who made the system hot for you when you were in office through endless articles and criticisms on national dailies and online blogs, I regret to say that just within 13 months that you relinquished the insignia of power, the prices of essential commodities have gone out of the reach of common people.

Things are so bad that Nigerians now steal pot of soup on fire. Nigeria is now drifting towards the Abacha era. Nigerians have watched and are still watching in aghast as things have suddenly gone awry. No essential basic amenity is working in Nigeria as I write.

Your successors have refused to tar a kilometer of road since you left and those roads that you constructed, rehabilitated and reconstructed have been abandoned. The Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) has been technically scrapped.

Of course, things were not rosy under you but today, the situation is worse and pathetic. Dear Ebele, I want to concur with your critics that you presided over a festival of corruption but common people never had it bad this way when you were in Abuja. We thought the economy was bad then but today it is hemorrhaging. The only thing working presently in Nigeria is the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s massive probe of your party’s CAMPAIGN FUNDS.

Nonetheless, the purpose of writing you this epistle is just to inform you that the Kaduna-Abuja Rail that you constructed and the train you bought which WE called Locomotive product then will be commissioned in few days time by President Buhari for the use of Nigerian people.

Dear Ebele, history will be kind to you for being the only President Nigeria ever had that has no skyscraper anywhere on the world. While your predecessor, Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy, Atiku Abubakar built private universities for themselves and their families, you built 12 and 6 public universities and polytechnics respectively for the use of Nigerians. Thousands of Nigerians got gainful employments through the aforementioned institutions.

The national minimum wage that you gave to Nigerians is now being taken away by those who took power from you. Prices of petrol, cooking gas and kerosene are no more within the reach of common people. Yam, pepper, onion, rice, beans, garri and even corn are gradually becoming the food of the ELITES in Nigeria.

The federal teaching hospitals that you built and upgraded are now at the mercy of no drugs. Medical personnel are now working without motivation. It’s strike everyday in the health sector. The situation of power supply in Nigeria has gone from bad to poor. Massive jobs lost now pervade the organized private sector.

Entrepreneurs are now wailing as businesses drain down. The automobile motor plants that you facilitated to Nigeria are now returning back to where you brought them from.

Sadly and most unfortunately, the media industry that connived with your opponents to send you out of office is still in conviviality with the ELITES to the detriment of the common people.

Dear Ebele, please note that you are not a saint but time and events have proved that majority of your critics are empty barrels. They are noisemakers. Time has showed that they are worse than you.

The rights to speech and expression that we enjoyed under you have now moved from rights to privileges. As local and raw your wife Patience was, she never called a sitting governor a MAD DOG. Let me just stop here, sir.
Adeleye wrote from Aafin Compound, Ilogbo-Ekiti, Ekiti state