admin
Dear Queen Elizabeth II
I write with intense pleasure to Elizabeth, the queen of seven independent nations as I know you will be very glad at the glorious successes which the British Empire recorded on the shores of Africa during the voyage of discovery and consequent extension of your authority to the British protected areas. I feel honoured to resuscitate your Majesty’s joy, good works and trust on people like Lord Lugard, Clifford, Boudillion, Richards, Macpherson, and Oliver Lyttleton in Nigeria at this 59th independence day celebration. It is with my deepest emotion and sincerity that I need to let you know that the British handiwork in Nigeria is still in existence. All you are hearing about the bad conditions of your greatest colony on the west of African coast might not be the true nature of things but be patient enough to read this piece in order to get the summary of our testimony. You must have heard that we have emerged as the largest economy in Africa and I write to attest to the truth of it, her majesty. I am so happy writing to you having known that you are one of the strong pillars behind the decolonization of many African countries and many initiatives which include the devolution of the United Kingdom and expansion of the Commonwealth of Nations, Nigeria being part of it.
I understand that your first visit to Nigeria was in the year 1956, from the 28th of January to the 16th of February. As at that time Nigeria was on the process of gaining independence from the British government. Your second and last visitation was from 3rd to 6th of December, 2003, for the 18th Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. A lot of changes had occurred and have continued to occur after your visitations. There are so many stories about Nigeria which you have never heard before that prompted me to write to you in person. I will tell you the truth of the matter in the most original ways. This letter cannot contain it all but I will be brief and write as many as possible to enable you know where the breeze is coming from, that is either from the Atlantic Ocean or from the Sahara desert. See what has happened
Very soon you will be forgotten, cleared from the dust bin of history and nobody will ever remember that there was a time Nigeria felt the presence of the illustrious Queen. British history will be gone and their labour shall never surface any longer in Nigeria. The British Commonwealth will be reduced to mere economic relationship on equal basis with no care to know how it all started. Provoked? Yes, I would like you to be angry because the country that you took time to create has banned the teaching of history in their school systems. By ban on history, Nigeria would forget that it was once colonized by the great British Empire and the story that Mongo Park discovered River Niger where an average Nigerian used to fetch water even before his arrival would be a fairy tale. My queen I would like you to see things together with me. Don’t you think with utmost understanding that Nigeria could be free from all her worries as no one can tell the history of the Nigeria Civil war which will soon die with the ban of history? Those who are minorities in Nigeria will forget their plight and all attempt to dominate them should be hidden in the burnt history of historical records. I assumed that we are not afraid of repeating our past mistakes by failing to learn from our history and I don’t know if it was the British that taught us the goodness of such policy in a wide nation like Nigeria. I know that British cannot be so unintelligible but may God give them wisdom if it was part of their imperialistic policies. My Queen, do not be astonished by the provocative words of the letter. I wish to share the burden of your great colony with you and I bet you all hopes are almost lost. I want to bring to the notice of the queen that my people have greatly been influenced by the drama at the European Union or what is widely known today as the “BREXIT”. It impresses me to understand that the fusion of independent state into the European Union ceases to exist when such state demand to be free and therefore reserved with the rights to be exempted from such fusion. The referendum in Europe have casted its light spell upon my people and there have been serious mockery to our democracy for insisting that Nigeria’s unity is not negotiable. I wish you will come again and be plain to tell us what it means to be a democratic state in order to settle the controversy amicably. 51 years after the civil war in your great colony, the people of Biafra still want to gain their freedom from Nigeria. So many people have died for demanding what they termed their right and some are being held captive as political prisoners while falsely accused with treason. If it was the British Court that set up our justice system, I think if your majesty do not intervene in the situation of Nigeria , one can rightly say that British Court is a court of injustice. I wish not to compel her majesty to over react without balancing the understanding of the situation in a country they had claimed to have led out of darkness.
I need not to remind her majesty about terrorism in the nation. It has assumed the status of the world deadliest terror group. It is called Boko haram, an Islamic extremist group fighting to have a sovereign state governed by Islamic laws, and Fulani herdsmen which is the fourth deadliest terror group as ranked by the Global Terrorism Index in 2015. As I write to you now, every moment is pregnant with danger in your former colony where I found myself. Government here cannot even protect lives and property and every aspect of the nation’s system is in need of total overhaul. The positive minds that will put things in order are all corrupt. In my study room I lean against my shelves starring helplessly to the screen of my computer having finished typing this letter but I wonder how to fight against corruption since corrupt people cannot fight against corruption. In all sincerity, I have never seen where demon cast out demon.
The southern shores of the nation which have all the resources of the nation are threatening and fighting against the government too. They are demanding for their own republic. I think what we are waiting for is for her majesty to come in glory and repent of her mistake in fusing different beliefs into common purse.
Your Majesty, Unemployment, poverty, instabilities, and ethnic bigotry have been on considerable increase in recent times. The economy of that nation which you use to see as great has crumbled into recession. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer. There are no infrastructures or social amenities to prove that indeed, there is a government with us since I was born in this country. I cannot even comprehend the impact of the National Assembly on this people. At times, I wonder the essence of the elections we usually repeat every four years and the ugly scene has been that same individuals have been in power since the return to our defiled democracy in 1999. My greatest worry is that the situations will lead us all into hell fire. The government is frustrating peoples mind to wrong their fellow citizen in quest for survival and I have never read in the religion you taught us to follow that one can defend himself in heaven on ground that his character was defamed at the time of committing any sin. Unless if the religious book is merely an act to colonize our belief and subject us to slaves of mental delusion. The picture of an unseen God reduced in Christ terms and the killer terrors of Jihadists who would be rejected by a true Islamic faith. We are as confused as chameleon and as regretful as people in Amatrice on the day of the great earthquake.
There is also a change that your majesty would like to see. The place everyone once called the “Bedrock of Nigeria’s Industrialization” has been abandoned. I am talking of the Ajaokuta Steel Rolling Mill and Nigerian Coal Corporation equally abandoned Coal mining in Enugu state. The resultant effect is the reflective menace of unemployment that spread across the country. Tin Mining in Jos which was once called Tin City in Africa by the Europeans before the discovery of oil in Nigeria are no longer in good condition. The Gold in Zamfara state is being mined by local indigenous chiefs at the detriment of the national economy.
I will leave you with some open wonders of any righteous mind for you to be able to address the Nigerian situation. I write in the madness of my thought that we are all into one association to prevent the occurrence of world war in the future and we all agree to the statute establishing the right of man. I learnt from your majesty, some certain inalienable rights which all human possesses for being just human. I can equally understand that we are into some association to eradicate poverty, improve our health and protect our fundamental human right. I wonder why the whole world keeps quiet when a particular people demands for the observance of their inalienable right for freedom of self determination. All our problems are boiled in one thing which is the oil and the devils excrement has been a blessing and sources of woe to my native people. What sweets a white man can sweet an African and that is the freedom of the people to decide what they will do with their state. You have not led Africans out of darkness if the political systems of this part of the world are still in this condition my dearest queen. Extend my greetings to your husband Prince Philip with all honour and sincerity to the glory of God Almighty.
About the author
Anierobi Walter Ifeanyi is a prolific writer, political scientist and a law student of chukwuemeka odumegwu ojukwu university, Anambra State.
Copyright Reserved
© 2019
For knowledge and Justice
Advertisment
Raphael
admin