President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it is with utmost respect that I write you via this column. Sorry that I have elected to make it an open letter. Not out of disrespect. Not even because I do not trust the courier agents or any middleman or go-between who could have delivered the letter to you through the convoluted distribution channel in Aso Rock.

I have decided to make this letter a public document because the matter is dire, urgent and can no longer be treated with any modicum of privacy. The matter is now public and compelling. It demands urgent actions, not vide private memos but actions backed by orders and commands.

It’s about insecurity in Nigeria. It has gone beyond pillow talk. No whisper can spur the military to action. Holding private meetings with the nation’s security top brass has proved ineffective. They need more than closed-door chats with you. It has become a routine that has routinely become ineffectual. Just talk and counter-talk inside the protected cocoon of Aso Rock. But out there in Bornu, Niger, Kwara, Ondo and everywhere, terrorist run wild like freshly castrated bulls.

Heartwarming that you have boldly confronted the monster that has over the years almost swallowed the nation’s economy. Glad to see the naira assuming and stabilizing at its true value to global currencies. Grand that you have cleared the backlog of forex debts owed multinationals whose only sin was choosing to do business in Nigeria, the same Nigeria that begged them to come and invest here. Nice to notice that you have courageously stopped the primitive practice of printing more naira notes to pay wages and meet sundry obligations, a voodoo economic theory inherited from the failed Presidency of your predecessor.

Mr. President, I am thrilled by the sheer audacity of your economic reforms even with its harsh impact on Nigerians. But it is by far better to endure the pains of today for the prosperity of tomorrow than to enjoy the make-believe pleasure of a varnishing present and be drowned in its inevitable doom the morning after. Only an objective analyst would cut you some flowers for your economic reengineering strides. They speak in agriculture. They manifest in growing non-oil export. The imprints are etched in the return of foreign airlines and other multinationals to the country. Who does not notice the stacking up of Nigeria’s foreign reserves and growing exports? Prices of goods once sky-high are beginning to ebb, especially home-grown goods including consumables. For these and many more, I join the corps of hailers of Tinubunomics.

But there is a problem, Your Excellency. There is no excellence whatsoever in your security report card. Yes, you inherited a dead economy handed down to you by the undertaker called Muhammadu Buhari who had no business in the gritty and demanding business of leadership in the 21^st century; not even leading a local government council. It’s obvious you are working hard to fix the mess, an economic mess that dates back to the military era when accountability in leadership was anathema; a taboo. On this, I strongly believe the cup is half full, not half empty.

In spite of your efforts to fix the rot in the economy, I am alarmed that you have allowed insecurity to fester, unchallenged. I hardly need remind you of your apex position of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and the demands of that office. You are the last word and final voice in the command and control structure. The last hope of the people. These same people, Nigerians, are yet to feel your presence in the insecurity mix. The enemies of Nigeria – Boko Haram and sundry brigades of beings cloned in hell – are massing up garrisons across the nation. Their footprints of blood and death are everywhere. In the last one month alone, Mr. President, your citizens have gone through the most harrowing moments. In Niger, Sokoto, Kwara, Kano, Ondo, Borno. Everywhere!

Fear is thick in the air. Aren’t you bothered that under your watch, schools are being shut; students are being kidnapped for ransom and released with fanfare as if it were some poorly scripted and far more poorly acted movie? This is not new but many expect you to do better. Not because you had any military background but because unlike Buhari who openly defended and identified with Boko Haram terrorists before he became President and made no genuine effort to tame them as President, you have and had no link or sympathy, whatsoever, for the killer mobs.

The solution is not in changing service chiefs. You have done that yet no abatement of the scourge. You have put more men on the job via recruitment. Not even more firearms and war hardware have helped. Truth is, none of this would because the problem is deeper than manpower and weapons of war. The real problem and the chief reason the war on terror is failing is because there are Boko Haram members and supporters within the armed forces and in your cabinet. They have sabotaged your efforts and will continue to do so if you fail to identify them and deal with them as saboteurs that they truly are. This is no fable. President Goodluck Jonathan in his time, in 2014, admitted that Boko Haram members and supporters have infiltrated the military and his cabinet. He could voice this because he was a neutral, not one with vested interest.

Mr. President, you are another neutral and a tougher leader than Jonathan. You have all the intel on your table. Use them to ferret out these saboteurs running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. They serve no good except undermine the efforts of genuine members of the Armed Forces which you lead. The danger in not minding the current state of insecurity is that the more the nation slips into the umbra of insecurity, the more profoundly slurred your reputation becomes.

And by the way, Your Excellency, you have to muster the courage to scan through the list of your appointees in the security sector. Don’t you think some persons have overstayed their welcome and their utility. They, too, should be sacked. But more than anything else, purge the system of moles, those wolves in sheep’s clothing. Let’s have a leaner, loyal Armed Forces and not a bloated security system configured to work against itself. Let the Armed Forces work for Nigeria, not work against itself. Command that the lapses, some deliberate, that encouraged mass abduction of some Nigerians and the murder of General Musa Uba be probed.

Do something radical Mr. President. Cast away politics.