An Open Letter to all “Open-Letter” Writers.

Dear Eminent Members of the Bench of “Open-Letter” Writers

I will like to apologize upfront for this highly unoriginal mode of communication. However given the current rain of Narcissistic Open-Letters I have come to understand the logic of your preferred communication methodology. Firstly, an Open-Letter accentuates the communicative impact of its message as Cyberspace and the print media (not to talk of Newspaper vendors who will hawk bootlegged version of the letter) create a “Coliseum Effect”, a wide audience of “fight-night” Bookmakers (reminiscent of my secondary school rofo-rofo “land-of-settlement” brawls) chanting fight! fight! fight! to your public display of unbridled belligerence, selective amnesia and immaturity. May I humbly suggest that we all exchange email addresses, so that in future we limit our correspondence to those they are intended for. But then that will defeat the earlier stated primary objective of an Open-Letter wouldn’t it? But I digress…
Secondly, thanks for informing us that you have made our country a forest of a thousand snipers, so based on the Igbo principle of “Nkwucha aburo ujo” (that to be vigilant should not be mistaken for cowardice), and the Oyibo saying that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”, I believe that it will amount to suicide to deliver my message to you individually or as a collective of Eminent members of the Bench of Open-Letter Writers. I am also aware that no megalomaniac worth his salt will allow me to deliver my full treatise (I understand that the standard is between 10 to 18 pages) in person without regally truncating the presentation, constant omniscient interjections, or cursing my ancestors for giving birth to a “small boy” who lacks respect for his elders.
So to the crux of my Open-Letter to the Eminent Members of the Bench of Open-Letter Writers.
Does it not bother you that though the 2015 Presidential Election is a full year and 4 months away, the current drama, acrimony, horse-trading, bare-faced lies, half-truths, polarization and prostitution of the media, manipulation of the masses, treachery, corruption/stealing, cross-carpeting, beatification of Area-Boy politicians, Open / Surreptitious letters, alleged Snipers list, regional / ethnic / religious rivalry and intolerance are all reminiscent of the run-up to the August 6, 1983 Presidential Election? Or are you blinkered by the desire to wrest power by any means necessary, intoxicated by the enchanting music of Partisan and obsequious Sirens thus cannot see the rocky coast, the potential Shipwreck ahead?
Of course we acknowledge that most members of your Eminent association are professional politicians, accidental public servants, two-faced carpetbaggers and paid cyber Cerberus. So we understand that your letters are anything but altruistic, little more than a frenetic jostling to position yourselves to ‘eat’; and your squabbles a fallout of regional / sectional / religious Ali Babas and their respective bands of forty. My “Open Sesame” moment was the realization that if the Ali Baba or Aladdin legends where to take place in this day and age, rather than a flying carpet, one or two Bombardier Global Express Private Jets (at about US$50 Million a pop) will have been the preferred mode of transportation. Expectedly this is what happens when the populace leaves governance to drop-outs, pick-pockets, acknowledged / habitual junkies, area-boys, rabble-rousers and erstwhile ‘also-rans’. For when they finally wangle their way into positions of authority, propelled by moral bankruptcy and a poverty of ideas and of the pocket, they can only but line their pockets, grabbing with both hands and feet in a futile attempt to provide for their generations yet to be born. Just like Aladdin and his contemporary Ali Baba, some of the elected leaders we have today are the corporate world equivalent of an erstwhile doorman as the CEO of UAC or MTN Nigeria, with the attendant lack of requisite management, financial or administrative quotient. But then they say that a people get the leaders they deserve, don’t they? Again I digress.
So I beg you all in the name of whatever deity you believe in, please tone down the bellicose rhetoric for the election is a good 16 months away. Do not destabilize or destroy our dear country due to your vaulting ambition, avarice and egocentrism. You got away with it in 1966, you did it again in 1983 and it is evident that you are hell-bent on making it a treble in 2015. But I have news for you all. There is an Igbo saying that goes, “na nke ato ka ife ji eme’; the third time is a charm, so in the self fulfilling prophecy that was M.K.O Abiola’s middle name, “Kasimawo”, lets wait and see.
I am sure that you noticed that this letter is not about who did what or who did not do what. It is not about being a captive Ijaw President or missing Petro-Dollars, it is not even about well placed filial anger or the attention seeking pontifications of a Cyber Cerberus. This is about the aspirations of 170 million strong people of Nigeria against the desires of a saprophytic and sycophantic few. This is about a people’s self preservation and a collective desire to protect our country from a marauding band of bandits.
Enough is enough!
Ours is a democracy, so come April 2015 (if that is the given election month), go out there and vote-in or vote-out whoever you desire, but please, please, please, do not destabilize our destroy our country in the interregnum. Enough of the self-seeking, narcissistic and selective amnesia riddled Open-Letters. Nigeria belongs to all of us and an “Open-Letter’ does not a leader make.
To our youth who have (out of ignorance, poverty or a combination of both) become malleable and dispensable pawns in the on-going rofo-rofo, a generation of pygmy dreams and hobbit expectations, all I can say is that N10,000 can only last for so long….‘Odi Eshi’ is a myth, you are not bullet-proof, dead men don’t bite neither can the dead spend N10,000.
To my intellectual friends who are polarized on both sides of the divide, none of the present crop of accidental leaders is worth the acrimony, for all are the fingers of the same leprous hand.
For those of us who have joined the fray, are part of the status quo, we thank you for holding forth, bearing our torch, however changing Ali Baba’s gang from within is a myth that will consume or corrupt you. Never has a drop of pristine conscience been able to purify a putrid pool of malfeasance. Either way you will never be the same again.
To the vocal opposition, abeg Political Opposition is not an infantile maligning of the incumbents’ every action. Constructive Opposition is about acknowledging the positives, pointing out the shortcomings, and most importantly showing the electorate how you will have done it different as well as convincing us that your way is better!
To the incumbents, please focus. Do not let the heckling of the opposition distract you from the objectives you have set for yourselves, ultimately posterity and the electorate will judge you.
To the rest of us who desire change, real positive change that will impact and change our country, the General Election is barely 16 months away, so get off the fence or your high horses…mobilize, strategize, conscientize and a collective will emerge…for 2015 may well be the halfway mark, but the goal is definitely in sight.
Thank you.
You have my best regards as always.
 

Jekwu Ozoemene
“The-Accidental-Open-Letter-Writer”