Re: Your 66th Independence Anniversary Letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu
Senator Ojudu,
I have read your open letter to President Tinubu with care. On the surface it reads like the concern of an elder statesman. A closer reading however reveals what it truly is. It is the tired performance of political relevance by a man who has spent the last three years looking for a ledge to stand on since the structure in Ekiti and the mandate of 2023 passed him by.
You begin with memory and friendship. That is convenient. But memory cuts both ways. You remind the President of the pro-democracy struggle and of the long nights of politics. You conveniently forget the years that followed, when you were not on the street but inside government, with access, with salary, with influence. You served for eight years in the Buhari Presidency.
Sir, during those eight years Nigeria borrowed itself into a corner. During those eight years the Central Bank printed money through Ways and Means until the naira lost meaning in the market. During those eight years we had a CBN governor who turned monetary policy into political warfare with the naira redesign that shut down markets, emptied hospital accounts, and left ordinary Nigerians queuing for their own money. You were in the room. You were part of the senior team. The question is simple and it will not go away. What did you say then? What memo did you write? What policy did you resign over? Silence in power and sermons in opposition is not courage. It is calculation.
Distinguished Senator, you now speak of hardship as if it was invented in May 2023. Hunger is real. Prices are painful. But to pretend that this crisis began with fuel subsidy removal is to practice the politics of amnesia. The subsidy was a fraud that bled two trillion naira a year. The multiple exchange rate was a racket that rewarded a few and punished the many. The debt was unsustainable. The President you are writing to inherited a balance sheet that was already on fire. He chose to fight the fire. You and your colleagues in the last government chose to manage the smoke and hope Nigerians would not notice the heat. That is why your moral authority to lecture today is thin. Very thin.
Sir, you also speak of governance and of advisers shielding the President from bad news. Again, convenient like Ekiti palm early morning wine. But governance is not a spectator sport. You were Special Adviser. You were Senator. You were in the Villa. If advisers were lying to power, you had the duty to say so while you were being paid to say so. If you could not, then you should not pretend that your resignation from relevance now qualifies you as the conscience of the nation. Conscience is tested at the moment of decision, not in a press release after the fact.
I also wish to look at the matter of consistency. You criticize a federal government that your own household benefits from. Your daughter Moremi works in the federal system. There is nothing shameful in that. Millions of Nigerian families depend on that system. But it makes your posture of total outsider dishonest. You cannot be a beneficiary of the state on Monday and its chief accuser on Tuesday and expect to be taken seriously. Yoruba people have a name for that” Elenu m’awi m’aje”. It means eating from two pots.
Politically, your journey since 2022 tells its own story. But before then, when the Ekiti Central senatorial ticket went to Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, a choice the people affirmed, you moved to the other camp in search of appointment. When that did not yield the office you wanted, you returned to commentary. That is your right. But do not dress ambition as patriotism. The Afe Babalola Road episode was not about principle. It was about visibility. And when citizens confronted you with facts, the response was abuse, not argument. That is not the temperament of a man who should now be advising on national healing.
On elections, you call for free and fair 2027. We all do. But democracy also demands respect for rotation and for outcomes. The presidency has just left the North after eight years. It is now in the South. To begin to agitate for its return after one term is to destabilize the fragile trust that holds this federation. You know this. You were part of the conversations that produced that understanding.
Dear Senator Ojudu, Nigeria needs honest critics. But it does not need revisionists. It does not need men who were inside the house when it was burning and now stand outside with a bucket of water to claim they discovered the fire. If you want to help President Tinubu, the place to start is with truth. Admit your part in the accumulation of our problems. Apologize for the years of silence. Then propose solutions without the sanctimony.
The President’s job is not to be popular. It is to be right. The reforms are painful because the alternative is collapse. Every nation that recovered did so through hard choices, not by returning to the policies that destroyed them. Judge the government by results in 2027, not by sermons in 2026.
Until then, spare us the performance of sudden concern. Nigerians remember. And history, unlike politics, does not forget.
Sincerely,
•Oloroogun Sola Ajisafe, Lawyer/Journalist lives in Akure, Ondo State.
