Righteous anger is not haram

By Dr UCHE DIALA

Mr. President, permit me to start by respectfully telling you not to believe or to allow anyone to decieve you that all the people out on the streets in the last few days are your enemies who did not support or vote for you and our party the APC, or who hate you or are all members of the opposition who want to overthrow your administration.

They may call us angry. They may mock our patriotism and our relentless call for patriotism, but we shall neither be swayed nor dissuaded by their hypocrisy and mischief. What true happiness can one have when the next person is hurting badly?

Indeed, I am righteously angry and it is not haram (Ephesians 4:26). For at the place of righteous anger, brave and honest truths are spoken and positive things happen, insha Allah.

That honest and brave truth we shall continue to speak in righteous anger and un-hypocritical patriotism until change happens for all, or we die trying. No apologies for that.

Here’s one of those many honest truths that I directed to my beloved President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (GCFR).

Mr. President, permit me to start by respectfully telling you not to believe or to allow anyone to decieve you that all the people out on the streets in the last few days are your enemies who did not support or vote for you and our party the APC, or who hate you or are all members of the opposition who want to overthrow your administration.

That is not true Mr. President. In fact I can respectfully tell you that, aside from those elements who are creating mayhem who the law should come down heavily on, many of the protesters are your ardent supporters and admirers who actually genuinely love you and wish you success more than many of us who would sing your praise in public but castigate you in private.

Many of those people are genuinely hard up, not because they are lazy or unpatriotic but because they are barely managing to survive. For every one of those on the streets, there are hundreds of thousands of other Nigerians at home nursing their pains quietly.

Mr. President, I respectfully and humbly suggest and advice the following:

1) That you immediately review, overhaul and or redesign the templates and modalities for delivery of those palliative measures, including removing anyone who has been found wanting in their delivery with a view to doubling or speeding up the processes.

2) If the governors have refused or failed to make those things available to the citizens, there is no tenable reason why more should be channelled through them. We can not continue to do the same thing and expect a different result.

Mr. President, (…), permit me to respectfully make the following additional suggestions and advice:

1) That you as a matter of urgency re-jig your cabinet including your in-house staff to remove persons who have either stunted or not sufficiently contributed to the progress of your Renewed Hope agenda. While doing so, deliberate effort should be made to reduce the cost of governance as much as is realistically possible.

Doing so will undoubtedly additionally restore the confidence of many Nigerians including that of your sincere and ardent supporters like myself.

In that same vien, Mr. President, I respectfully urge you to expeditiously inform Nigerians what you have decided to do about one of your Ministers, Dr Betta Edu who has been on suspension and under investigation for over 6 months now.

Such things give a bad image to your administration and equally affect the confidence of Nigerians. If such an important ministry can run without a minister for so long, what was the need for it to have a Minister in the first place?

2) Mr. President, I also humbly advice you to rejig your media team and architecture to make it more effective and efficient in not just informing Nigerians but also in effective communication to Nigerians.

With all due respect and consideration, if they have been proactive and efficient in communicating your administration’s plans to Nigerians, there would be less noise in the polity and a better understanding and cooperation by Nigerians.

3) Finally, Mr. President, I humbly urge you to have a direct heart to heart dialogue and engagement with Nigerians, especially our youth. Not through proxies or representatives who either have no connection with the citizens or do not have the trust of the citizens.

*Culled from my OPEN LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRESIDENT ASIWAJU BOLA AHMED TINUBU (GCFR) on the 6th of August 2024 titled, ‘MR PRESIDENT. BEHOLD THE VOICE OF A LOVING AND ENGAGED SUPPORTER CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS’.

#GodBlessNigeria

©️ Uche Diala