Open Letter To Buhari: When Presidential Directive On Bash Ali’s Project Is Disregarded With Impunity

TEDDY KNORR

The President,
Mohammadu Buhari, GCFR
Commander-In-Chief,
Federal Republic of Nigeria,
Aso Rock Villa,
Abuja-Nigeria.

Dear Mr President,

ISSUE OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE (AN OPEN LETTER)

Bash Ali- OON, a National Award Holder and the oldest active young man in the world of boxing history, to me is among the most patriotic Nigerians.

This is a Nigerian-American citizen with all the opportunities at his beck and call in America who decided to come home to his mother land to bring honour by rewriting the world history, has being taken for a ride for eleven years now.

While Presidential statements are taken as directives in other climes and held in high esteem as actions follows immediately to the spirit and letter, to bring about the desired result-effects, but here in Nigeria, an impression has been given over the years as if Presidential statements is now like a beer parlour-gutter talks, thereby ridiculing the exalted office.

What message are we sending to the youth? That Nigeria is NOT worth dying or sacrificing for? Is it surprising why some of our sports men and women are renouncing their place of birth and taking up the citizenship of other nation? We need to work the talk to correct these anomalies.

The Office of the President should realize, it is NOT Bash Ali that this exalted office is ridiculing, but that the exalted office, as history will recall took eleven years of pleading for Bash Ali to be given an opportunity to bring honour to his mother land.

Please note, this is a man that turned down a Forty-Eight Million Euro offer deal for this same envisaged Guinness Book of World Record Boxing Tournament to have taken place in Europe.

Please let your government that is held in high esteem as a result of your integrity be the one as history beckons to do the needful.

It is embarrassing enough for Bash Ali OON, to be pleading and begging for eleven years now for the needful to be done. And moreover, why is the Minister of Sports  and all the sport advisory team (SA’s , SSA’s and PA’s) not to have seen the huge embedded business in this anticipated Guinness Book of World Record Boxing Tournament and to advice Mr President appropriately.

Mr President, please treat this Bash Ali’s matter as an issue of National importance with military dispatch so as to inspire our youth that we got a Country, that Nigeria cares. With this singular act alone, we would begin to correct the impression other nations has about us as jokers and not serious people.

Sir, history would be kind to you if you break this jinx that two previous Presidential directives could not and did not mean to do.

Akhidenor Teddy Knorr
(Town Chanter)
Concern Nigerian,
On behalf of Concern Nigerians,
Boxing Fans and the Boxing World.