Dear Former Senator Sunday Olawale Fajinmi:
I just finished reading your �Merry Christmas
greetings� to Jimmy Asiegbu, president of Anambra State Association in the United States of America (ASA-USA). Since this is the Christmas holiday season, it would be unchristian to not say �Merry Christmas�
to you. However, that would not dissuade me from telling you that you should
be ashamed of yourself for mixing your so-called Christmas message to Jimmy Asiegbu with ethnic insults and provocative, bigoted balderdash.
If you have personal issues with Jimmy
Asiegbu, common sense would suggest that you focus on those. But you obviously couldn�t resist the desire to heap insults on Igbo people. Igbophobia is a disease that afflicts millions of Nigerians; a disease that has retarded the progress of a
country that should be a shining example to all of Africa. That you have fallen victim to this infection is not surprising.
Before I get to the substance of the anti-Igbo
tirade you sent
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to Jimmy Asiegbu, why don�t we start by correcting the silly errors of spelling in
your write-up? Typographical errors happen, and mistakes are human, but in a country
with higher standards, one would expect people calling themselves �senator� to
have enough discipline and self-respect to proof-read what they write, to make sure their written records meet
basic standards of literacy.
But Nigeria�s sorry situation being what it is, I guess this is probably
too much to expect.
Knowing what we both know about our country and
the embarrassingly low quality of its leadership, that�s not shocking. But it�s still quite unfortunate.
In a one-page letter, you
spelled 11 words incorrectly. That�s a
lot in a one-page letter. It almost
takes you to the level of semi-illiterate. Here
are the words which, under your incapable hands, somehow went haywire:
�Inuendos.� The correct spelling is �innuendos.� I
want to believe you actually know the meaning of that word. It
has several nuances. But
I won�t get into those.
�Convinient.� That should be �convenient.�
�Suprised.� Make that �surprised.� Everyone
knows what that means, including people who are incapable of spelling it correctly; people like you.
�Goverment.� There should be another �n� there; as in �government.� For
someone who participates/ participated in the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, one would have expected
you to get this one word right. But you obviously
can�t correctly express the word that describes the line of work you are/were involved in. Nigeria we hail thee!
�Attrocities.� Kill the second �t.� The
correct spelling is �atrocities.� By the way,
that�s a very strong word, Mr. Senator, right up there with similarly ugly words like �evil,� �hatred� (such as
the hatred you nurture against the Igbo), �holocaust,� or �genocide.� Not
to be used lightly, if you understand English very well.
�Commited.� You need a second �t� in this one, as in �committed.� Get
it?
�Posser.� As they say in Nigeria, �dis one pass
me-o.�
I assume you were trying to say
�poser.�
But who knows?
�Belive.� I can�t believe you don�t know how to spell �believe.� That�s more than embarrassing.
�Camelion.� The correct spelling is �chameleon.� Judging from your hypocritical write-up,
this is a label that fits you rather well, Mr. Senator, much like the rest of your kind. That�s
why I�m shocked that even a word that describes you so well, you can�t get right.
�Belif.� Not only are you incapable of getting the verb form of this word right; even the
noun form is beyond you.
That�s serious. Next time you want to use this word, please make sure to write it out on a sheet of
paper.
It�s �b-e-l-i-e-f.�
�Concience.� Looking at the substance of your Igbophobic tirade, it�s not surprising that a man like you, with so little conscience, cannot spell �conscience.�
Well, in this Christmas period, which
calls for goodwill amongst all peoples of the world, you have chosen to talk about �yabis�
and indulge in the sick old game of spewing anti-Igbo bigotry. After going through your
so-called �yabis,� it is evident that a person with such a low level of intellect
as yours was never designed to be a senator. No wonder you did not make
it back to the Senate, even under the devalued, pathetic standards that prevail in Nigeria�s government.
Having lost your senatorial seat to Akinlabi Olasunkanmi
and consequently, the limelight that goes with the position, I guess you are eager to serve as Chris Uba�s loudmouth, if only it would provide you some platform, even if of dubious relevance. If Chris Uba paid for the INEC form and campaign
expenses of Chris Ngige, would it be the first time such had happened in Nigeria�s corrupt political culture? Did Obasanjo not say that those
who contributed to his 1999 campaign should take their contributions as their sacrifice towards nation building? Why should Chris Uba�s contributions to Chris Ngige�s questionable election in Anambra State be a license for Uba to pauperize Anambra State?
There is no difference between the way
some generals cleared the way for Obasanjo to be released from prison, pardoned and sponsored to the presidency,
and Chris Uba�s sponsorship of Chris Ngige. Obasanjo was made to sign documents the same way Ngige was forced to do;
and Obasanjo reneged on the documents he signed, just as Ngige did.
Today, Obasanjo is preaching the gospel of �honor among robbers.� I bet what this honor among
robbers means is that Chris Uba, through the impeached deputy governor � Chris Ude � should be in charge of the Anambra State�s treasury.
Quite incredible!
Senator, how did you come to know where
Uba and Ngige were on election
night and what happened at collation centers, when you should have been monitoring the election returns at Osun State, particularly at your very own Osun West senatorial district,
on the same election night?
You claimed that you knew what happened on the
election night, particularly at the collation centers in Anambra State, but did not have the guts to tell us how
AD was sent packing from Iwo (your town), Osun West senatorial zone
(which you represented), and all the states in the Southwest, except Lagos.
If the documents and video tapes on Ngige�s resignation which you claimed to have in your possession mean anything to you, you could go ahead
and insure them. I have the documents too and they are worthless trash. I have read the documents where Chris Uba � a megalomaniac, based
on his extremely limited understanding of what politics should be all about � had the guts to parade himself as
a sacred-cow godfather, and behave as if Anambra State is his property.
There is no doubt that Uba
learned the dirty trick of pre-signed resignation letters from his mentor and brother-in-law Obasanjo. Did Obasanjo not tell Nigerians
at the beginning of his administration that all his ministers, except Danjuma, Adamu Ciroma and Bola Ige, had been forced to pre-sign their resignation letters?
Talking about the late Bola Ige, are you not ashamed that the late minister of justice and attorney general, who happened to have
come from Esa Oke in Osun State like you, was assassinated in his own bedroom on December 23, 2001, and up till today, his
killers have not been found?
Did you not promise Nigerians on December 24, 2001, that as the senator representing Osun West, you would use
your legislative powers to win justice for the family of the fallen justice minister? Three years after the murder
of Bola Ige, his killers are still on the lam. You have not fulfilled
your promise. And you have the nerve to talk about Anambra State!
What measures have you taken to solve
the murder of Bola Ige? Who killed Bola Ige, and why?
Was he killed by Igbo people? One would have expected you, as a senator from his home state and representing his senatorial zone,
to be on top of this heinous crime.
Evidently you have lost track of the Ige case, and now you�re an expert on another crime, this time in Anambra state, to the point that
you have in your possession the documents and video tapes on the planning of that crime? That�s impressive. But, Senator, would you tell us what documents you have in your possession on the assassination
of Bola Ige? As they say, charity begins
at home. How come the case of Ngige �settling� Uba is more important to you than finding the killers of Bola Ige?
Thanks to Wole
Soyinka, we know that Bola Ige was assassinated because
he was about to leave Obasanjo�s government to go and re-organize AD so that PDP, as he put it in his resignation letter, would not win a single ward in any of the Yoruba states.
He made it well known that he was the only person capable of rejuvenating his and your party � AD. If Bola Ige were alive today, you probably would have returned to the Senate
and continued to collect your committee allocations money. You would not have time
and the need to serve as Chris Uba�s loudmouth.
Senator Fajinmi, since your date of birth, as recorded in the Nigerian Senate, was November 16, 1962, this means you were less than five years old when Yakubu Gowon declared war on Ndiigbo on July 6, 1967. Yet you had the guts to write these words: �Of course some of you did not see the civil war. You only read about it.� This
makes it sound as if you knew anything about the Nigeria-Biafra war. In
fact, you knew nothing about the war, other than whatever propaganda and distortions of history that were fed to
you many years after the end of the war. Considering
how closed-minded you are, I can confidently state that you have certainly not been exposed to the truth about
what actually happened during the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 to 1970. This
being the case, portraying yourself as knowledgeable about that war is fraudulent, to say the least.
I used to believe that �the worst democratic
government is better than the best military regime� but that maxim has been truncated by Olusegun Obasanjo. It was convenient for you
to tell us that MKO and Kudirat Abiola, Pa Rewane, etc. were murdered by Abacha
and Abdulsalam regimes but you conveniently �forgot� to mention that Bola Ige, Dikibo, Harry Marshal, Ogbonnaya Uche, Andrew Agom, the poor villagers of Odi, Zaki
Biam and a host of others were murdered under the watch of the �democratic�
government of Olusegun Obasanjo. How do you feel about the fact that none of the listed sponsored assassinations has been properly
investigated, let alone prosecuted?
If it makes you feel good, you might want
to continue to repeat yourself on why some people like you believed that, as you put it, �the IBOS can not be trusted
with the presidency yet.�
But the truth is that Obasanjo did not become president because some people could trust Yorubas with the presidency.
If that was the case, how come he lost the 1999
presidential election in all Yoruba states, particularly in his ward and his own hamlet of Owu? (And by the way, the correct spelling for the ethnic group is I-g-b-o;
it�s �Igbo� not �Ibo.�)
Were you saying that the outcome of that
1999 presidential election
was an indication that while the rest of Nigerians �trusted the Yorubas with the presidency,�
the Yorubas did not trust themselves to occupy the position? Could this trust you alluded to be the reason why Obasanjo was overtly antagonistic
to Abiola, a fellow Yoruba man, who was about to become the president in 1993? One day, you would have to admit, like Muhammadu Buhari recently did, that things stopped working in Nigeria when Ndiigbo were blocked from certain leadership positions.
While in the Senate, you were the Vice
Chairman of the committee on Steel.
But except for sharing monies allocated to your
committee, there was nothing else to highlight about your achievements. You were such a �no show,�
even in Osun West senatorial zone, that Mr. Akinlabi Olasunkanmi once said: �When I undertook the tour
of the local governments before the primaries, I was surprised that many people did not know that Senator Sunday
Fajinmi is the one representing the area. Even in Iwo where
he comes from, he is not popular among the people.� Whereas you were a failure
in the Senate and in your senatorial zone, surprisingly, you are now an expert on the politics of Anambra state. How is that possible?
Your failures in the Senate and your senatorial
zone might begin to be redeemed if you would courageously join in finding the killers of your kinsman Bola Ige. Wasting your time on Chris Uba
and the politics of Anambra State
would not do you any good.
In 2005 and beyond, I hope you can somehow find
the courage � courage well above your character � to do what is right, and figure out more useful things to do
than disseminating hatred against Igbo people.
Have a happy and meaningful New Year.