| YOUR LETTERS
Open letter to IBB on 2007
Sir, permit me to cast
your mind back to
when you took over the mantle of leadership in 1985. You succeeded in convincing Nigerians that the Buhari regime had no respect for human rights and thus your government was ready, to accommodate everybody. Your mission was to establish a new viable political culture for the country. Millions of Nigerians concurred with you, especially the victims of the Buhari/Idiagbon war against indiscipline. To cap it all, when you invited the then season academics from various Nigerian universities and posted them to serve in the relevant ministries of their professions as ministers and directors, two third of Nigerians saw hope in your government. No government in the past had done so. Once more, when you threw the IMF debate open for Nigerians to decide, many entrusted their confidence in your regime at the embryonic stage.
But sir, your eight-year period ironically was a turbulent period and ended in political fiasco because despite all the long train of political transition, no Nigerian president ever stepped aside because of political pressure.
When you took over, Nigeria witnessed free market economy. The western capitalist policy of liberalisation and commercialisation were the new market oriented systems regning. The I.M.F loan which the Buhari/Idiagbon regime rejected was the first issue of deliberation. Very kind of you, at the initial stage, you threw it to our best brain economists to decide the reality or myth of its potentialities. After several weeks, economists like Prof. Sam Aluko advised the government to shy away from it. They coined it as “Chicago school purposely designed to subtly discourage the third world from aiming at industrialization.”
Initially your government seemed to be convincing. But suddenly, you went ahead and took the loan. Whatever explanation, the rest is history. What Nigerians have been experiencing since then have been inflation, devaluation of the naira, hunger, and starvation, artificial poverty and above all, insecurity which is naturally inevitable in such pathetic situation.
Sir, your eight years are enough to judge you by Nigerians. For you to re-emerge again now, means to rekindle and x-ray both the blunders of the third republic and the wounds that are already healing with the passage of time.
Malam Lawan J. Tahir,
is the coordinator Democratic
Enlightenment Association Borno/Yobe States.
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