An open letter from the northeast appeared on April 4, Saturday, on Leadership. The people of the region address Muhammadu Buhari disclosing their expectations from the president-elect.
Signed by Sulaiman Badamasi, MSc. Health Informatics (CUU), the message contains the congratulations, so as the wishes regarding the development of the region, badly affected by Boko Haram insurgency.
See the letter below:
“Your Excellency, let me begin with congratulating you, myself and fellow Nigerians on this momentous triumph. It was indeed, a conquest of allegiance and sacrifice, and we thank you as well as your cohort for breeding the idea of and striving towards achieving this #Change.
“Looking at the other side of the coin, there awaits you a great burden to deal with; while those who keenly voted for you expect heaven and earth, due to your widely celebrated reputation, those that opposed you might be expecting the most tormenting hell, due to defamatory allegations of atrocity and dictatorship that they had heard about you. However, we in the northeast are not exempted.
“Permit me Sir, to convey to you what we in the northeast would want you to begin with, in our region; we need security of our lives and properties to be guaranteed just as it used to be, have peace living like other parts of the country and have our bloods duly accounted for.
“To be more specific, we have a belief that there was total negligence and insincerity in fighting the insecurity that has, for six years; killed our lives, demolished our markets, destroyed our schools, razed our villages, crippled our economy, reduced our jobs, disturbed our peace, displaced/handicapped our people, restricted our movement, bombarded our wellbeing and took us far back compared to other regions of the country. It is due to that belief that, never like before, you are now able to secure more than 90% of votes from both my state, Yobe and Borno states respectively, while securing 100% the IDPs camps.
“Now in the northeast Sir, everything that sustains a region/nation is being targeted at and put under aggressive annihilation. For any nation to attain sustainability, it is sine-qua-non to have all or most of the following assets in place; education, economy, farming, peace, transportation, infrastructure, healthcare services, youth, policy and information.
“But these are the attributes that are being massively chased with extermination in the northeast, without us enjoying the fruits of being a component of any merciful government, because the government has kept on refusing to admit that we are facing the problems, talk less of healing them, for example; when it falsified the fact that more than 2000 people were massacred in Baga, and later, after facing wide condemnation, admits but reduced the number significantly and insisting that only 15,000 people were killed throughout the span of insurgency. This kind of response causes us more grief than the damages sustained from the attacks.
“Finally, for the past three years, we only rejoiced widely and moved freely in my home town, Potiskum once (i.e. on 31st March, 2015) when they announced that you have won the election. There were also strategic roads in the town that we only could pass through on that very day, in the period of 3 years, due to restriction of movements. This applies to many parts of the northeast Sir.
“I hope that lack of freedom, peace and confidence meets end when you descend the throne, and I pray that a ministry, commission or a special rehabilitation program be created to handle our problems. Thank you.”
Meanwhile Buhari, while receiving a delegation from Yobe on April 3, Friday, thanked residents for their continuous support throughout his political career. Apart from that, the president-elect praised Governor Gaidam for “maintaining the relationship at the highest level”.
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