It grieves me to pound out a letter to your good self in circumstances such as these, on the subject on which I feel compelled to address myself to you in the paragraphs below, because they are matters which as the oyinbo would say, really should go without saying. My grief aside, I also am conscious of the impertinence on my part, certainly a slight sense of incongruity, as with the young Obi Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease when he won public disgrace and reduced his primary school headmaster to tears by writing a letter to Adolf Hitler, no less, at the height of World War 2. You are no Adolf Hitler, madam, but neither am I a precocious prepubescent colonial pupil unmindful of the treasonous implications of giving aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime. I am a Nigerian citizen concerned about the welfare of my own sovereign state, and you madam, far from being in a legal state of war with Nigeria, are the wife of its elected president. By some bizarre twist of circumstances you could well be the most important person in Nigeria today, certainly the most important person in government, by virtue or in spite of your constitutionally indeterminate position as First lady, with all the arrogated powers appurtenant.
