Will President Jonathan go on exile for the unfulfilled promise of a second Niger bridge?
By John Okiyi Kalu
Exclusive USAfrica & USAfricaonline.com edition
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My dear President Jonathan; permit my taking advantage of the example set by one of your predecessors, retired Gen, Olusegun Obasanjo, who threw decorum to the wind and wrote you a very harsh open letter. I am not bound by same
rules that makes it impudent, careless and irresponsible for a former President to write a sitting president using media houses as means of delivery. I am just a common citizen of Nigeria; also your supporter, since 2011.
This is my main reason for writing you: Sir, most of the promises you made to the south east are yet to be fulfilled. If you examine the performance of your government in the south east, you will certainly come to the conclusion that a lot is left undone and must be done before October 2014. The best time to start the second Niger Bridge is NOW. The best time to start reconstructing the roads which are crying for your urgent, presidential intervention was YESTERDAY.
Hence, Your Excellency, I have a problem only you can solve. No single bag of cement has yet been mixed for construction of the second Niger Bridge you promised since 2011 with a completion within the 2015 deadline. I remembered the news report published 31/8/12 with the caption: “I will go on exile if I don’t build Second Niger Bridge —President Jonathan”.
Sir, respectfully, it appears your enemies are finally going to send you on that “exile.” While I pray it doesn’t happen, I don’t see how that bridge will be ready in less than 15 months to the end of your tenure. Please don’t let your opponents suggest Afghanistan as your new home in exile. They are counting months for you already.
Part of that problem is that in the course of campaigning for you, I told my people that you are from a neighboring state, married to a woman who is, in part, an Igbo daughter. I added that you know most of the problems in our area. I told them you have promised to build a durable, modern second Niger Bridge to ease access to the south east as well as dredge the River Niger to allow goods bearing ships to sail into Igboland. I told them you promised to make Akanu Ibiam Airport an international airport and Owerri Airport an international cargo airport. I told them you promised to fix Aba-Ikot Ekpene Highway, Port Harcourt Road in Aba, Enugu-PH highway, Umuahia-Ohafia highway, Enugu-Onitsha highway, Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene Highway and Enugu-Abakiliki highway. I promised them that all Igbo will be protected wherever found in Nigeria and that you have assured of steady power supply latest 2014.
Everything I told them I heard from you in the course of your 2011 campaign to become Nigeria’s President.
Your Excellency, of all the things I told them you promised you will do, only Akanu Ibiam international Airport has been realized, albeit partially, because there is yet no completed new terminal building befitting an international airport and there is only one runway. Enugu-PH highway is currently undergoing rehabilitation (patching) especially within the Abia stretch while Ikot-Ekpene Road and others remain death traps. From Opobo junction at Aba travelers must take a dangerous detour through unpaved rural roads before emerging at the Akwa Ibom end of the highway. The Abia end of the Aba-Ikot Ekpene highway is simply an eye sore and communities have been cut off.
Recently, I traveled from my base in the Niger Delta to Awka in Anambra State then to Asaba and returned via Enugu-PH expressway in the course of looking for my daily bread. On my way to Owerri from PH I noticed that immediately after the signpost that says “welcome to Imo State”, the road became un-motorable as the Arab contractors could not be found. From Assumpta roundabout in Owerri to Onitsha is probably the finest road in the South East currently. Olusegun Obasanjo’s government constructed it. But from Onitsha to Enugu can best be described as a death trap set by enemies of our people to devour them. Onitsha to Asaba is inadequate although it has improved through Anambra Governor Peter Obi’s effort— with your support.
My reason for letter is not to criticize your administration but rather to alert you on what is likely to happen within the next 12 months. I have heard the rumors of your intention to contest 2015 election and I have nothing against that given that you have the constitutional right to do so. Moreover, I do not think you have fared worse than your predecessors and actually believe you have performed better than most of them. But I am aware of plots by those who believe the Presidency is their birthright to shove you aside “by all means possible” and regain their presidential birthright and prove to us that they reserve the right to decide who occupies that seat.
We have heard allegations that some of those partisans are sympathetic and some funnel resources supporting a terrorist group (Boko Haram) to unleash mayhem on the country and force your government to spend valuable resources on a war on terror that non of your predecessors prepared the country for.
I know about the heavily funded propaganda of lies against your government including attacks on key performers in your administration. They seem to be succeeding in rubbishing you before the people while tagging your pro-democracy intuition as “cluelessness”. They have even partially succeeded in dividing your home base by ensuring that you fail to diligently attend to issues that are important to your people like the East-West road and implementation of UNEP report on Ogoniland. Obviously you don’t want to be tagged a Niger Delta president and hence you have not done enough in dealing with genuine issues of concern to your own people. That in my view, is a gross error.
What I know is enough to make me vote for you in 2015 if you decide to run. My real headache is what I will tell my people that I convinced to vote for you in 2011. Why?
Most of your promises to them appear unfulfilled!
If I can find 10 substantive things you have done for them, we will deliver to you 95% of Igbo votes in the South East and across Nigeria.
I do not expect you to respond to this note. It will be enough to just ask Reuben Abati or any of your aides from the southeast to help list out for me what Ndigbo have benefited from your presidency vis-à-vis the massive support we gave you in the last election. Just a simple itemized list of roads, bridges, power projects, seaports, airports etc completed in the east by the federal government will be enough. Completed projects only. I will simply copy and paste them in my brain and convey same to my people.
As you are aware, Sir, the gang of political goons in the opposition APC consider breaking your backbone in the east a key task. I need not remind you that if they succeed your 2015 dreams will simply become a mirage, if truly you have such dreams. To achieve that task, they are ready to deceive my people with claims of “President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan your brother abandoned you and he did nothing for you.” They are even dangling a deceptive VP carrot to Ndigbo to induce us into abandoning you for them. Even when we suspect they have no intention of actualizing it and they continue to support and defend terrorists that are ever too happy to target our people all over Nigeria. We are now faced with making the decision of either dining with the so-called ‘devil’ we know or following the ‘angels’ we know as ‘devils.’
Fulfill your 2011 promises and you will not need to give money to any Igbo leader or group as alleged by a certain Joe Igbokwe of Lagos State. The N1.6billion allegedly deployed to induce our leaders in 2011 is enough to fix Aba-Ikot Ekpene Highway and make it better than Owerri-Onitsha Highway. The money reserved for pacification of radical groups can also construct Enugu-Onitsha highway and make it a campaign promise fulfilled. We, ordinary Ndigbo, will back you to success if we see that your government has fulfilled it’s promises to us.
I mobilized thousands of voters for you in 2011; many of us will do same in 2015 if you do the needful.
If you don’t, I will simply walk alone to the polling booth like a Liverpool fan and cast my solitary vote for you and return home to watch Chelsea maul their opponents that Saturday in 2015.
At the moment, your supporters in the southeast do not know how to convince our people to vote for you in 2015 because of those unfulfilled promises. Tell us what to tell them by simply doing what you promised. We sure don’t wish for you to go on “exile” as a result of a failed promise made without any gun pointing at your head.
If you don’t respond quickly, APC will enter Awka through Owerri……
Ya gazie, Mr. President. •Kalu is the Nigeria-based opinion and public policy contributor to the Houston-headquartered USAfrica, USAfricaonline.com and the IgboEvents e-group.
Why Jonathan should fight back, or Obasanjo will end his presidency. By Chido Nwangwu. https://usafricaonline.com/2013/12/19/why-president-jonathan-should-fight-back-or-obasanjo-will-end-his-presidency-by-chido-nwangwu/
•Follow Twitter.com/Chido247, Facebook.com/USAfricaChido
USAfrica, December 19, 2013: To fully make sense of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s December 2, 2013 letter to President Goodluck Jonathan, you should follow the key point of my analytical deduction which I refer to as Obasanjo’s unspoken historical burden; namely, for the 3 times where he exercised partisan power and influence in Nigeria’s presidential election history,
he has faced unpleasant twists, unexpected and unsatisfactory outcomes: 1979 (he supported Alhaji Shehu Shagari, NPN, removed in a military coup in 1983); 2007 (he personally picked an ill Alhaji Umar Yar’Adua, PDP, who died after 3 years of ineffective presidency as the 13th Head of State on May 5, 2010) and he also picked Yar’Adua’s VP, Goodluck Jonathan who became acting President on May 6. On April 18, 2011, he was declared winner of the presidential election with the very active campaign support of Obasanjo.
But Obasanjo insists that Jonathan is not good enough and deserves the December 2 acidic, public denunciation of his presidency and worse, of this same man who has been, according to my key sources in the presidency in Abuja, very respectful and deferential toward Obasanjo.
Based on Obasanjo’s military antecedents, power attitude and drawing from my reading of his history as a leader, he will Not — for lack of a better word — “forgive” Jonathan despite his references to God and Christ, and to the great Nelson Mandela the same week as a forgiving leader. To be sure, Obasanjo does not have the forgiving spirit of Mandela…. For the FULL text of this commentary, click here https://usafricaonline.com/2013/12/19/why-president-jonathan-should-fight-back-or-obasanjo-will-end-his-presidency-by-chido-nwangwu/
WHY I CELEBRATE THE LIFE AND WORKS OF NELSON MANDELA. By Chido Nwangwu https://usafricaonline.com/2010/07/15/mandela-why-i-celebrate-his-life-works-by-chido-nwangwu/
—— 2014 book: In this engaging, uniquely insightful and first person reportage book, MANDELA & ACHEBE: Footprints of Greatness, about two global icons and towering persons of African descent whose exemplary lives
and friendship hold lessons for humanity and Africans, the author Chido Nwangwu takes a measure of their works and consequence to write that Mandela and Achebe have left “footprints of greatness.”
He chronicles, movingly, his 1998 reporting from the Robben Island jail room in South Africa where Mandela was held for decades through his 20 years of being close to Achebe. He moderated the 2012 Achebe Colloquium at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.”I’ll forever remember having walked inside and peeped through that historic Mandela jail cell (where he was held for most of his 27 years in unjust imprisonment) at the dreaded Robben Island, on March 27, 1998, alongside then Editor-in-chief of TIME magazine and later news chief executive of the CNN, Walter Isaacson (and others) when President Bill Clinton made his first official trip to South Africa and came to Robben Island. Come to this island of scourge and you will understand, in part, the simple greatness and towering grace of Nelson Mandela”, notes Chido Nwangwu, award-winning writer, multimedia specialist and founder of USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned U.S-based newspaper published on the internet, in his first book; he writes movingly from his 1998 reporting from South Africa on Mandela. http://www.mandelaachebechido.com/
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There’s a compelling political trinity to Nelson Mandela: the man, the messiah and the mystique. https://usafricaonline.com/2013/07/18/mandela-95-hearty-cheers-to-his-footprints-of-greatness-by-chido-nwangwu/
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Why Chinua Achebe, the Eagle on the Iroko, is Africa’s writer of the century. By Chido Nwangwu, Publisher of USAfrica, and first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the internet USAfricaonline.com https://usafricaonline.com/chido.achebebest.html
USAfrica: As Egypt’s corrupter-in-chief Mubarak slides into history’s dustbin. By Chido Nwangwu. https://usafricaonline.com/2011/01/30/chido-nwangwu-as-egypt-corrupter-in-chief-mubarak-slides-into-historys-dustbin-egyptians-not-waiting-for-obama-and-united-nations/
Nigeria’s Federal Republic of Insecurity. By Chido Nwangwu, Publisher of USAfrica, USAfricaonline.com and the Nigeria360 e-group. https://usafricaonline.com/2011/12/17/nigeria-federal-republic-of-insecurity-by-chido-nwangwu/ : IF any of the Nigerian President’s 100 advisers has the polite courage for the extraordinary task of reminding His Excellency of his foremost, sworn, constitutional obligation to the national interest about security and safety of Nigerians and all who sojourn in Nigeria, please whisper clearly to Mr. President that I said, respectfully: Nigerians, at home and abroad, are still concerned and afraid for living in what I call Nigeria’s Federal Republic of Insecurity. FULL text of commentary at USAfricaonline.com https://usafricaonline.com/2011/12/17/nigeria-federal-republic-of-insecurity-by-chido-nwangwu/
Obama’s Africa agenda, our business and democracy. By Chido Nwangwu, Publisher of USAfricaonline.com and CLASS magazine and The Black Business Journal
Related insight: USAfrica’s October 17, 2001 special report/alert: Nigeria’s bin-Laden cheerleaders could ignite religious war, destabilize Africa. By USAfrica’s Publisher Chido Nwangwu. https://usafricaonline.com/chido.binladennigeria.html
https://usafricaonline.com/tag/al-qaeda/
• For seasoned insights and breaking news on these issues, log on to USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica powered e-groups including USAfrica at googlegroups. Follow us at Facebook.com/USAfricaChido, Facebook.com/USAfrica247 n Twitter.com/Chido247
USAfrica: As Egypt’s corrupter-in-chief Mubarak slides into history’s dustbin. By Chido Nwangwu. https://usafricaonline.com/2011/01/30/chido-nwangwu-as-egypt-corrupter-in-chief-mubarak-slides-into-historys-dustbin-egyptians-not-waiting-for-obama-and-united-nations/
Related and prior reporting on the Jos crises on USAfrica, click here: https://usafricaonline.com/2011/08/16/10-killed-in-renewed-violence-near-jos/
News archives related to Jos, here https://usafricaonline.com/?s=jos
310 killed by Nigeria’s ‘talibans’ in Bauchi, Yobe n Maiduguri; crises escalate. USAfricaonline.com on July 28, 2009. www.usafricaonline.com/chido.ngrtalibans09.html
http://www.groundreport.com/World/310-killed-by-Nigerias-talibans-in-Bauchi-Yobe-n-M/2904584
Trump looks foolish and crazy screaming about Obama’s birth certificates, college records and Muslim connection. By Raynard Jackson
www.usafricaonline.com/chido.ngrtalibans09.html
Tunisia, Egypt . . . Is Nigeria next? By Prof. Rosaire Ifedi https://usafricaonline.com/2011/02/13/tunisia-egypt-is-nigeria-next-by-prof-rosaire-ifedi/
In the light of an icon, my mentor Stanley Macebuh (1942-2010). By Chido Nwangwu https://usafricaonline.com/2011/03/07/stanley-macebuh-tribute-by-chido-nwangwu/
Follow us at Facebook.com/USAfricaChido, Facebook.com/USAfrica247 n Twitter.com/Chido247
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• Nigeria’s bin-Laden cheerleaders could ignite religious war, destabilize Africa. By USAfrica’s Publisher Chido Nwangwu. https://usafricaonline.com/chido.binladennigeria.html http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=USAfrica+Chido+Nwangwu+al-qaeda+terrrorism+nigeria&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 https://usafricaonline.com/tag/al-qaeda/ 310 killed by Nigeria’s ‘talibans’ in Bauchi, Yobe n Maiduguri; crises escalate. USAfricaonline.com on July 28, 2009. www.usafricaonline.com/chido.ngrtalibans09.html http://www.groundreport.com/World/310-killed-by-Nigerias-talibans-in-Bauchi-Yobe-n-M/2904584
Related and prior reporting on the Jos crises on USAfrica, click here: https://usafricaonline.com/2011/08/16/10-killed-in-renewed-violence-near-jos/
News archives related to Jos, here https://usafricaonline.com/?s=jos 310 killed by Nigeria’s ‘talibans’ in Bauchi, Yobe n Maiduguri; crises escalate. USAfricaonline.com on July 28, 2009. www.usafricaonline.com/chido.ngrtalibans09.html http://www.groundreport.com/World/310-killed-by-Nigerias-talibans-in-Bauchi-Yobe-n-M/2904584
Trump looks foolish and crazy screaming about Obama’s birth certificates, college records and Muslim connection. By Raynard Jackson
Why Chinua Achebe, the Eagle on the Iroko, is Africa’s writer of the century. By Chido Nwangwu, Publisher of USAfrica, and first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the internet USAfricaonline.com https://usafricaonline.com/chido.achebebest.html
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In the light of an icon, my mentor Stanley Macebuh (1942-2010). By Chido Nwangwu https://usafricaonline.com/2011/03/07/stanley-macebuh-tribute-by-chido-nwangwu/
The greatest Igbo ODUMEGWU OJUKWU’s great farewell in Aba. By Chido Nwangwu https://usafricaonline.com/2012/02/28/the-greatest-igbo-odumegwu-ojukwu-farewell-in-aba-by-chido-nwangwu
USAfrica: Ikemba ODUMEGWU OJUKWU’s farewell in Aba, today February 28, 2012, reflected a fitting tribute, historically meaningful celebration, proper regard and deserving appreciation of the greatest Igbo, in my opinion, to have ever lived (like him or hate him).
I SALUTE Aba (aka Enyimba city), the robust and fearless town I was born, bred and raised, for giving the Ikemba, our Ochiagha, Gburugburu, Oka oburu uzo, dike na ndu ma n’onwu, mgbadike anyi, a hero’s farewell.
To the Ikemba, may your valiant soul rest in peace and dignity.
We will, and I, Chido Nwangwu, will never forget to continue to tell my generation and the next about your towering courage through tempest and thunder; through sorrow, pain, tears, blood…. •Dr. Chido Nwangwu, Founder & Publisher of USAfrica multimedia networks, first African-owned, U.S-based newspaper published on the internet USAfricaonline.com; and recipient of several journalism and public policy awards, was recently profiled by the CNN International for his pioneering works on multimedia/news/public policy projects for Africans and Americans. http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2010/07/29/mpa.african.media.bk.a.cnn.
News: At Ojukwu memorial in Dallas Texas, USAfrica’s Chido Nwangwu challenges the Igbo nation to say never again like Jews.
Ojukwu trouble and Ikemba titles. By Chido Nwangwu
• For seasoned insights and breaking news on these issues, log on to USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica powered e-groups including Nigeria360 at yahoogroups and USAfrica at googlegroups. Follow us at Facebook.com/USAfricaChido and Twitter.com/Chido247
