Letter To David Axelrod: You And Buhari – By Chika Onyeani - African Events .com
Letter To David Axelrod: You And Buhari – By Chika Onyeani
I must congratulate you on the great job you have been doing – first you had our son and hero, Barack Obama whose father is African – elected as the first black President of the United States of America. It is the greatest gift you have given to the African world, nay to the black world and the world as a whole. You definitely deserve our admiration and praise. Though you woefully failed in Britain to have the Labor Party beat and replace the Conservative Party, you nevertheless spectacularly succeeded in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.
As you have acknowledged many times, the All Progressives Party (APC) party retained you as a consultant for the 2015 presidential election in Nigeria. Just like in Obama’s case, you coined the slogan “Change” for the APC campaign. I know you are a Chicago person, and it is easy to understand how the APC came about to hire you as a consultant. Well, remember that the party leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, lived there for awhile. Yes, that Tinubu, yes the same Tinubu who had forfeited the sum of $1.4 million to drug-related money-laundering to the Justice Department. Yes, I am sure you remember him – former Senator, former Governor of Lagos State, acknowledged leader of the All Progressives Congress who bankrolled Buhari’s presidential campaign and ultimately his election.
These bits and pieces of information are insignificant, but I am sure a man in your exalted position would have had no problem having access to the information. You have to give it to the APC, they made the right decision in connecting themselves to an individual who is Obama’s right hand man rather than Lanny Davis who the PDP hired. You know what always surprises most of us Africans: how the African leaders in Africa talk nonsense about the African Diaspora, but when they need anything done that involves paying somebody a lot of money to do it, they always choose to go to a white person. It has become their axiom of faith.
But in your case, it has become a great investment for the APC, for Buhari and ultimately for Nigeria as a country. Look at what you have achieved. APC swept the elections in Nigeria; your “Change” slogan had Nigerians vote overwhelmingly for a former tyrant and dictator who imposed draconian laws against freedom of expression in Nigeria, backdated and executed drug dealers without trial, had many innocent people locked up without trial, and an individual who is bent on the islamicization of the whole of Nigeria.
As I said, in the case of Nigeria, you have succeeded spectacularly. Look at what is happening this week in Washington, DC. Nigerians are so flummoxed with happiness at the fact that their newly elected President has been invited by the same President Obama who had vowed to have nothing to do with Nigeria to Washington, DC, but not just being invited to Washington, DC, but to stay at the quintessential presidential guest house, Blair House. You know, I could have vowed that only Nelson Mandela has ever been accorded that honor of staying at Blair House, until I found out that a few other African presidents have had that honor as well, including William Tolbert of Liberia, Anwar El-Sadat of Egypt, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. What an honor to sleep in the same bedroom where Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George H and Barbara Bush, George W and Laura Bush, Barack and Michelle, have all slept. Nigerians are just so giddy with appreciation, because they know that given his antecedent there is absolutely no way that Obama would have extended an invitation to Buhari to visit him, let alone being hosted at Blair House. Nigerians are grateful, okay very grateful, whatever you are paid is worth it.
But did you notice anything anomalous in the delegation that you just welcomed to Washington, DC? Isn’t shameful that a country like Nigeria, which has seen our earlier Presidents including Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan empower and promote women in the last 16 years, would now see women relegated to the background, nay in fact totally deleted? Just count the number of delegates in Buhari’s delegation, are we to be told that he couldn’t find a qualified Nigerian woman to accompany him to meet with President Obama” Of course, in your zeal to show off your prized fighter, this might not be of concern to you.
As we have been told umpteenth time, security was the most important topic of discussion between your former boss and your current employer Buhari, especially the insurgency of the Boko Haram that has seen more than 15,000 Nigerians massacred by an organization that the same Buhari had said an attack on them was an attack on the whole North. And it was reassuring to note that President Obama has confidence on Buhari’s promise of having a clear path of defeating Boko Haram. Well, Sir, maybe the more than 400 Nigerians who have been killed since Buhari assumed the presidency is just a smoke-screen and a prelude to Boko Haram’s surrender after achieving its avowed aim of rendering the Goodluck Jonathan government weak and goading Nigerians to perceive that administration as incapable of providing security to the masses. This of course led to his defeat, and the result is the election of Buhari. So the quicker the ruse of Boko Haram is abandoned, American tax payers would not be forced to pay for a manufactured insurgency of which Buhari is the major beneficiary.
So, dear David, I don’t want to bore you with the senility, geriatric utterances and total implosion of the Nigerian currency and stock exchange since Buhari assumed office, except to say that I am proud of your having our President sleep in the same bed as all the other four former American presidents and their wives. I am sure this would have a major effect on his performance going forward. But you know how the saying goes, you can take the horse to the water but you can’t make it drink. A pig is always a pig no matter how you dress it. So goes with a dictator, there is nothing like a former dictator.
As your employer Buhari begins to methodically transform Nigeria and islamicize the country, don’t be surprised when one day the flag of ISIS is hoisted in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.
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Dr. Chika Onyeani is the Publisher/Editor-in-Chief African Sun Times
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