By Starrys Obazei | February 20, 2023
starrys@ddnewsonline.com
(An open letter to His Excellency, Gov. Nyesom Wike by Dr. Leloonu Nwibubasa, former Commissioner for Employment Generation and Economic Empowerment Rivers State. And now Spokesman, Rivers PDP Presidential Campaign Council).
Your Excellency, I heard you on national television begging Rivers people to save your political career by voting All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu for President.
The question are: Why is everything about Your Excellency’s own self-preservation? Has Rivers State not sacrificed enough for Your Excellency?
You trained as a lawyer in Rivers State University.
You were elected Chairman of your Local Government Council twice.
You were appointed Chief of Staff to the Governor of Rivers State for four years.
You were appointed a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria from Rivers State
You got elected as Governor of Rivers State and about completing eight years in office.
Your Excellency, you have been in office for about half of your current age, all by the magnanimity of Rivers people.
Rivers people jettisoned their power rotation arrangement to elect Your Excellency as Governor. It was all fair because you were the beneficiary.
The bullets sniffed life out of many for Your Excellency’s ascendancy.
Many have forfeited their own personal ambitions and purpose to feed your own unending drive for power (‘give me pawaa, I want to take pawaa,’ you said).
Your brothers, your friends, your kinsmen all supported your ambition to become the presidential candidate of the PDP.
They denied their own desire to support yours. Their lives were at various times at risk in the air as they flew with Your Excellency from state to state.
You prevent competition even in councillorship and chairmanship elections. You appoint Assembly members. You nominate all National Assembly candidates. You forbid all your friends and associates who were interested in contesting the gubernatorial election from purchasing nomination forms and from consultations and campaigning to the electorate. In fact, they were not even aware of who the delegates that will elect them are.
In all, no one dare challenge your least opinion.
The ones you appointed as commissioners live as slaves. They are only entitled to crumbs from the master’s table.
You sapped self-esteem from all local government chairmen.
Took away dignity from our royal fathers (you this small boy wearing Usman Dan Fodio cap).
You desecrated the altar of God by railing curses from the altar (‘thunder fire them’).
Our senior citizens, you denied their benefits and gratuities.
The civil servants under Your Excellency are not worthy of reward or promotion.
Our primary and secondary schools are without teachers, without seats and without roofs.
Our health centres and General Hospitals are without doctors, without nurses and without drugs. You built mother and child hospital and zonal hospitals still under lockdown
The students on scholarship abroad sponsored by previous administration you didn’t spare to withdraw from overseas studies.
The ones at home not qualified to have bursary allowances.
The teaming youths you promised time and time again to provide employment for, await a promise you never intended to fulfill.
Market women you kept outside built shops.
The business of the non-indigenes, especially the Ikoku traders you destroyed.
Songhai farm you abandoned.
Buguma fish farm you abandoned.
Largest Rivers State owned shopping mall built by His Excellency Sir Celestine Omehia you abandoned, erecting your personal hypercity malls.
You disbanded Timariv leading to loss of hundreds of jobs.
You recruited, trained and abandoned without pay, thousands of Neighbourhood Watch.
I can go on and on. Our Rivers’ money you donated at will to fan the embers of your ego while Rivers State is ranked among the top eight poorest states in Nigeria.
Yes, Your Excellency built roads and flyovers but left undone the more important task of building lives.
You artificially created poverty to keep us all under your powerful control.
You gained fame but now you have fallen to blame.
You built flyovers but you will be run over
You thought you can catch the wind
But deep down your soul is a grievous wound.
Now that the hunter is being hunted
He need the captives to rescue the captor.
Your Excellency, everything we could give to save your political career, you have already taken it away from us.
Now to your tents, oh Rivers people, and to Your Excellency, save yourself.