Dear Mr President.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA.

Dear Mr President,
Before I say anything, let me just have you know that at the moment, I'm too infuriated to be patient enough for the formalties of 'sir' at the beginning of every paragraph. Also, please realize, unlike other 'open letters' of this sorts, I'm not really going to begin by patronizing you.

Mr President, I am scared, I've lived in Nigeria all my life, slightly over two decades, and in all that time, I've never been this afraid of my status as a citizen of this great nation (or otherwise) of ours.

I always wonder... What exactly happened?? What went wrong??

At some point we (Nigerians) were regarded as the happiest people in the world. Now, Forbes rates us amongst the first 20 saddest..
Just try to imagine the political decadence that must have occured for that to happen.

How do I react to the fact that on tv the most significant information passed across is for citizens to 'steer clear of crowded places'? How can I live with the fact that going to church to serve God may be detrimental to my life??

Borrowing from my favourite singer 'How do you even sleep at night? Who do you pray for?' Who do you think of before you go to sleep? How do you look at yourself in the mirror?
Do you even care? Do we even matter to you? Or is it just about enriching your pocket and throwing parties for your wife at Australia.

Recall when you were campaigning to be president in 2011? After you had acted as president for some time, When you told us you had no shoes, when you brainwashed us by telling us you knew what it felt like to not know where your next meal will come from? You gave the people an impression that you understood them, when you really did not.

I know there are pressures that comes along with your office, and that you cannot possibly do 'everything', but do you ever try to consider that perhaps you brought this pressures upon yourself? No?

I just wonder why most citizens believed you and dared to imagine that perhaps you were different. Perhaps you were not as bad as those others. How wrong they were.

I probably always knew that you were nothing but a politician, but that's besides the point.

Do you remember wikileaks? How they exposed your statements to the American ambassador, how you said you were 'inexperienced' and naive. And you 'lacked administrative expertise', how you said you weren't the most qualified person for the then position of vice president. And that your appointment as vice president was purely political?

I wonder how Nigerians forgot about that. Oh wait, I think I remember, it was the time when Nigerians were so blindly in love with you and felt for some strange reason that you were their Messiah!! I'm pretty sure they know better now.

Here is something extremely important. You have come up with an idea to grant amnesty to these terrorists - Boko Haram, reports say you intend to pay them a sum of 100,000 naira a month, keeping in mind that you already pay militants from the south 75,000 naira. How much do youth corpers earn? A meagre 19,000 naira. These are people who have toiled to get themselves an education. And that is not to say that there is an automatic job waiting out there for them after the service year. It's back to the hustle and bustle. We can therefore deduce that violence pays more in Nigeria than an education. Wow!!

I can't blame you for the amnesty deal though, that is probably the best option, especially considering that you probably are an egotistic narcissist, because I believe, if you are not, then your resignation may appease them (the terrorists), remember your assumption of office seemed to have triggered them in the first place, however, You and I know you're never going to resign. You love the office too much. Perhaps you should love the people more than the office.

A lot of people have lost their lives since you became president, if not from terrorist attacks, then from something stupid you'd come up with, removing subsidy on petrol for example.

Even though you probably will never read this, and this may be extremely insignificant to you, and you may regard it as a little boy's rant, fact is, you are not who the people thought you were.

The only Nigerians that are happy with you at this point, are those that benefit some things from you, and when I say 'benefit', I don't even mean that legally.

I hate to recall your promises after you increased fuel pump prices on the 1st of January, 2012. But let me remind you of a couple...
-You said you'd provide a very large number of buses in every single state of the federation which would ease transportation. There are no buses anywhere around here, unfortunately.
You also said you would revive rail transportation, in fairness, maybe rail transportation is actually coming back to life. About time.

I am not going to end this by saying God bless you and God bless Nigeria and Goodbye, I honestly wish I could, but I can't.
I'm just gonna say: the nation is on a downward spiral, and it seems to be your fault. There's no way you can make Nigerians believe in you again, but since you're not going anywhere, at least until 2015, hopefully, try to alleviate just a little bit of the sufferings of Nigerians.