Following the rampant bombings by the Boko Haram insurgents, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo has written an open letter to the Islamist sect.
Iyabo blamed the leadership which she credited with “more sense but also faulted the insurgents for betraying the true essence of revolutionaries in directing their wickedness towards the lower class.
She what she has to say:
“I am moved to write about the
current state of affairs in Nigeria.
My first inclination was to write to
the President but since all letters to him seem to elicit only open
derision and even more stupidity
from his inner circle, I have decided to address my letter to a
group also currently causing
Nigerians a lot of pain and agony
that may actually have more sense
than the country’s leadership.
Dear Boko Haram
“First, your victims are becoming
more and more the people you
should be attracting to your side.
Take the Nyanya bus massacre.
“The people that live in Nyanya are usually the clerks, messengers and other lowly office workers that live out in relative slums compared to the rest of Abuja and take public
transportation to work to receive
monthly salaries they barely get by on.
“Consult any written work of
successful revolutionaries be it
French, Russian, Cuban or even the more recent uprooting of
communism in Eastern Europe, to
succeed you need the people to be on your side. Right now you are
not achieving this.
“You are targeting the group you
need most. This does not make for
a successful revolution but you are
making yourselves into nuisances to the people and in the end while the state, including its military machine may not be able to conquer you, your downfall will be alienating these potential allies, that is, the oppressed and down-trodden.
“Secondly, the abduction of girls. It
must be hard to stay in the bush as all male revolutionaries fending for yourselves with no s*xual gratification.
Cuban example
“But again, reading up on past bush revolutionaries like the Cuban, for example, indicates that they were able to convince some women to go voluntarily with them into the bush.
“Somehow, revolutionary zeal does not include s*xual abstinence and cooking and cleaning by yourselves.
“Reading must be hard for you
since you hate education but the
past is a good guide to the future
and if you can’t read, you are done
for in organizing or succeeding in
most endeavours as most things
have been done before and reading up on how it was done can only serve as good guidance.
“The parents of the girls you
abducted are just trying to give
their daughters a chance at having
successful lives. Without an
education there is very little anyone can achieve in this early 21st century.
“I know living in the bush; it must
still seem like the dark ages but the truth is that even with the lack of jobs and opportunities for young people in Nigeria currently, it is still better to be educated.
“An educated university graduate
who was selling food from a food
cart ignited the Arab Spring which
was spread by use of the internet
which is hard to use if you are not
educated.
“There are writings, videos and stuff you post on the internet which I haven’t seen. But think of it, you can only post and use the internet because some of you have some ducation.
“But in the end you have no
control over the distribution of
your advertising and recruiting
information because as you may
know, the internet is really part of
the western system you despise.
Why you’re succeeding
“The truth is that you have
succeeded because the Nigerian
state has failed to provide jobs and opportunity for its young people who you can now easily recruit. By disrupting education, you are adding to the burden of the people.
“You may say, but how about our
religious issue? Let the truth be
told, just as there are indigenous
southern Muslims, there are
indigenous northern Christians even from your epicentre in Borno State and just as you are zealous for your religion, I don’t see them giving up their religion either.
“The reasonable solution to this
impasse would be for you to
advocate for everyone to be able to practice their religion as they see fit with respect for each other’s beliefs.
“Remember, a couple of centuries
ago, all of our ancestors below the
Sahara were all animists worshipping various ‘gods.’
“This ‘One God’ — us against them
situation — is a relatively recent
one in our human history and you
will be advised to let the originators fight it out and let your people be.”
Source: InformationNG
