AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. ABBA MORO, THE MINISTER OF INTERIOR, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA

Dear Minister,

I send high regards as the office you so temporarily occupy deserves. I must not, being a pure-breed African, forget to tender my respectful regards to you being not only an elder, but one capable of fathering my person. Receive my best regards.

Unlike Japhet Omojuwa who in the past week attempted to air his grievances on the recently botched Nigerian Immigration Service recruitment exercise by spraying red paint on the premises of the Ministry of Interior, the entrance to your office precisely, I will prefer to tow a more gentlemanly approach and serve you the grievances of Nigerian youths on an intellectual, yet fearless platform. I do not only convey the minds of Nigerian youths as to how their lives were mal-handled at the various screening centres, I convey also their heartfelt disappointment in the non-fatherly manner in which you reacted to the aftermath of the jamboree screening exercise.

Prior to the D-day, Nigerian youths who applied for the said Immigration positions had been in high spirit trying to get themselves eligible for the screening exercise, gathering medical reports, identification documents, travelling across the length of the country to reach their examination states. You should not be surprised, they had high hopes because they felt the open screening exercise was a wide diversion from the common backdoor practice of the Nigerian Civil Defence. To them at the time, you seemed like a good man of some sort.

However, those hopes were not enough to suppress their utter surprise when they got to their various examination centres. The crowd was intimidating, the process was laughable and not only was their lives handled as crap, they were made to realize the real state of the Nigerian nation...full of crap! How could Nigerians, leaders of tomorrow be treated like packs of crap just so they could get employment to serve their own fatherland?

I was not part of the shocked pack, at least not until you issued a statement concerning the death of a good number of these applicants. I cleaned my ears and I still heard you place the blame for their deaths on their heads! You looked so gentle, yet you were spitting words that could only escape the mouth of a Mobutu Seseseko! Even Governor Adams Oshiomhole who suddenly became famous for his ‘go and die’ blunder would have had to take a lesson in blabbering from your exalted self. How could blame these young souls for dying when sixty thousand of them had just a single gate to pass through into the National Stadium? How could you blame them for attempting to do their utmost to secure a place in the service of their fatherland? How could you blame these ones, whose fatherland you swore an oath to serve for their untimely death at the hands of your incapacity?

Truth be told with all sense of humility sir, your words displayed the highest sense of tyranny and a steep descent into wickedness. I only need to remind you once, that somehow, someday, sometimes soon, your children or grandchildren will find themselves boxed into a corner that way, and what would you have fate do to them? Kill them and have them blamed for it?

On behalf of the entire community of youths in Nigeria, I wish to demand without mincing words, a sincere apology from your person, for according to recent news, you owned up to the mistakes made but you never tendered any serious apology. So, we demand apologies for the words you spoke for those words desecrated the sacredness of the lives of those ones your Ministry terminated through the incapacity of the Ministry and its consultant Rexel.

In the absence of unreserved apologies to the dead, the maimed and the living, the whole world will see you for who you are, an unrepentant killer, a phenomenal failure in a Federal Ministry and the worst nightmare of Nigerian youths. And in the light of that, we will pray for more Japhets, so we can give you as much trouble as you deserve, until you simply can handle it no more.

I do sincerely hope that you will act in all decency and pay your respects to the spirit of the dead while you tow the path of honour in apologizing to the living.

Receive sir, the assurances of my highest regards.

Thank you sir.