March 4, 2021
OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI, PRESIDENT AND COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE ARMED FORCES, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA.
Your Excellency Mr President,
This is the second time I am drawing your attention to issues of urgent national importance within the span of one week which if not tackled, will metamorphose into serious crisis that will even outlive your administration.
There is no doubt that God loves Nigeria, I am saying this because while many nations of the world are battling with natural disasters, most of our problems if not all are man made.
Mr President, I write to express my greatest dismay and disappointment in the selection of the Mai Tangale.
As a peace worker, builder and promoter, I will NOT fold my hands and watch without saying the truth, a situation where rules are floated at will, where crude rascality is displayed, where primitive sentiment dominates simple reasoning just to achieve vested religious interest to the detriment of majority of people.
Elections are elections irrespective of whom for which they are conducted. They are very sensitive, very delicate and are very serious business that I believe must be treated with utmost caution. I am of the firm conviction that elections must never be fiddled with even if they are organised for drudges let alone for the most educated and informed section of Gombe state.
I am being passionate about this, your Excellency not because of any vested interest but as a critical stakeholder I believe in allowing people to FREELY choose who will lead them through a legitimately established process.
As Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya is ignorantly bragging about his constitutional power to appoint whoever he wishes as the Mai Tangale, one begins to wonder, how the constitution will adequately shield a governor to not only covertly and boastfully install his anointed candidate but overtly usurps the powers of the selection process and twists the constitution to put a feely and peacefully conducted process on halt at the same time it was conducted based on religious sentiment just because the game of numbers appears not to favour his favorite candidate.
As a peace lover and a bridge builder, I find the antics of the governor of Gombe state in this regard highly unacceptable, reprehensible, dictatorial, demonic, barbaric, totally condemnable and above all undemocratic especially in a democratic era.
I went through the current Nigerian constitution in search of at least a provision that backs governor Yahaya’s demonic action, but I could not find any.
Since all knowing governor, the super governor, the governor general, Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya has credited to himself the powers to hire and fire, then there is no need to have king makers any more in all the chiefdoms of Gombe state and let it be on record that, henceforth, he should be imposing any time there is chieftaincy vacuum anywhere in the state.
Remember, Your Excellency, on the day of your inauguration in 2015, you told us that you belong to everybody and you belong to nobody.
If you don’t act as you promised particularly on this issue, we will drag you and governor Yahaya to the International Criminal Court of Justice so that you will explain why you were mute while the ancestral right of innocent citizens was forcefully high jacked, why innocent citizens were killed and numerous means of livelihood destroyed just because of religious bigotry which you planted, nurture and it manifested in this manner.
Your Excellency sir, please call Governor Yahaya to order and attention to return victory to the rightful owner of the stool before it is too late.
I am confident that you will reverse this ugly and dangerous trend in the interest of peace, development and humanity.
Yours in the service of our father land.
Amb. John Pofi, JP is the National Coordinator, Prayer Force Network.
