Those who created the T-pain label for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu must be grinning from ear-to-ear for the phenomenal success they have recorded! Not that they said anything new or that Nigerians were not familiar with the phenomenon they graphically painted but because the Tinubu government allowed it to get under its skin. When you respond to certain attacks, you give it traction. There are occasions when silence is golden!
Besides, grandma taught me that if you begin to remove the twigs and leaves on your head and clothes before you finally exit a bush, you have one more clean-up to do when eventually you hit the road. Failure is an orphan but success has many fathers. President Tinubu’s administration is at the moment marooned at the dreary juncture of failure. Except the situation improves, and quickly too, nothing he says will interest anyone. Is there pain in the land? Of course, there is!
Have things been this bad before? Of course, not! Has anyone seen the light at the end of the tunnel that Tinubu and his men console and comfort us with? Not really! So, until he succeeds, no one will believe him. What he needs to do right now is put his head down and work his arse out to achieve the success he envisions. Otherwise…! He has to learn from the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who said he stoically took all insults and wore them like badges of honour. Apostle Paul on his own said he counted all adversity as gain. May Tinubu not fail!
There was a point in my life when I was at that juncture. I left secondary school with one of the four best results in my class; for lack of mentoring, I rejected a scholarship offer to study in the then Soviet Union by my school principal, the inimitable Pa Adekunle Ajasin, who later became governor of old Ondo State and leader of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO). From my wide reading even as a secondary school student, I had become aware of the Black Rights Movement in the United States of America and of notable Black American activists and the school that produced many of them – Howard University (founded on 2 March 1867); so, it was Howard or nothing! Dad was financially capable but wouldn’t allow his only son leave (two had died in quick succession) but he wouldn’t say so clearly. He kept posting me, as they say, using unfavourable financial climate as a smokescreen.
Up to a point I believed him because he had recently lost a hefty sum to robbery that everyone suspected was an insider’s job. But as time wore out, I made my own plans. I joined up with a friend who owned a pools betting house and, for years, I “permed two from four”, “permed three from five”, “napped three, four or five” and even played “treble chance” hoping after hope to hit the jackpot and win enough money to send myself to Howard University, United States of America. I pored over pools forecast books – Willy Akinlude, Ehi Obiyan and many others! I had a notebook that contained up to a hundred “formulas” that were meant to produce “banker draws”. As if by providence or bad luck, formulas that worked before I knew them failed once I knew the secret!
So did I waste years – and the pocket money Mama gave to sustain me. Everything I had went into pools staking such that I literally became destitute. At a point, I had only a pair of trousers and two shirts. My only sandals were torn all over and I had to drag them on the floor when I walked. When Yakubu Gowon wasted Nigeria’s oil money on the extravaganza called Udoji award in 1974 and my mates reaped thrice the usual salary for auxiliary teachers, I spent day and night at Sammy Pools House opposite Oja Ojomo (Ojomo’s market) in Owo. One day my uncle advised my Mom to bundle me into a vehicle and deposit me at Aro (mental hospital, Abeokuta), reckoning that I must have run mad. My mother wept and wept!
Many thanks to my elder sister who pressured me to change location from Owo, first to Ede (to reside with her and her husband) and later to Osogbo after my in-law had helped me secure a teaching job at Osogbo Grammar school as an auxiliary teacher. From there, I proceeded to llesa Grammar School for my Higher School Certificate. It was while there that I wrote the first university matriculation examination and got admitted to the then University of Ife in 1978. When I went home to relay the good news with my letter of admission and ID card as incontrovertible evidence, my uncle was the first to eat the humble pie. He called me and said: “Ojo, I did not know you knew what you were doing!”
To God be the glory! I am also grateful to my elder sister and her husband. Listen to wise counsel! If I hadn’t listened, my story would have been different today – possibly for the worse. Few people believe in you when you are yet to arrive at the port of success. Trying to convince anyone with mere words is like pouring water on a rock. Try as they may, there are very few people Tinubu and his spokespersons will convince today that he is not as they have labeled him because, truth be told, there is pain in the land like never before. Only those who spend government or company money may not know this for a fact.
A wise counsel which Tinubu needs is that himself, his family members, close aides and top government functionaries must feel the pain of the people – not just in words but also in action for, as they say, action speaks louder than words. Those of them in government cannot live large while preaching to hapless citizenry to f’okan ba’le. They will not!
It irks me these days when people who know the truth pretend otherwise just to score cheap political points. All they seem interested in is calling a dog a bad name to hang it – the dog may not be totally blameless, though! I also feel offended when the people who are the grandmasters of the turmoil we go through have the temerity to come to the open to justify their ruinous rule and even try to shift blame! Such audacity!
Did you hear the World Bank say all the gains of 18 years spanning three presidents (Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan) were wiped off by Muhammadu Buhari’s eight-year ruinous rule? That was where the rains began to beat us heavily. The eight years of Buhari were years of the locusts. You expect such a person, if he will not be brought to book, to at least leave us alone; not that he, together with his second-in-command, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, will start to run their mouths in public. That is tantamount to rubbing salt on our injury!
But if anyone thinks this country can survive where there is no consequence for bad behaviour, such a person lives in a fool’s paradise. Must we always leap before we look? I hope the concern expressed by top military chiefs at a recent security summit will be treated as patriotism and not as high treason or insubordination. This is how a news medium reported it: “Service chiefs have expressed concern over security challenges linked to the construction of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal highway at a recent dialogue. A new dimension was added to the controversy trailing the construction of the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway… when service chiefs raised concern that Nigeria might be open to new security challenges when the road is completed and (becomes) operational”.
What were the concerns raised? One: “That there is no consideration for security architecture to protect this 700-kilometre stretch of road. But what we see is that when this project goes live, there will be attendant security challenges that would not have been catered for throughout the whole project. I think that as a nation we need to address this. When projects that have significant bearing on national security are being conceptualised, it is important to bring security agencies on board from the beginning… This road (coastal highway)… will also provide access to miscreants and other people that we do not intend to have access into our country” Two: That “both in its conceptualization and ongoing implementation, the military were not involved”! They did not say, ‘don’t have the road’; they only said, ‘make it safe’ – which makes sense!
Excluding military experts must have been an oversight. So, quickly involve them. As they say, better late than never! Let the “security experts bring in their own input so that we will have that road and it wil be secure for business”. I agree! Why spend so much money on a road only to end up creating additional security problems for ourselves? Our plate is more than full already!
Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of the Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Bolawole writes the On the Lord’s Day column in the Sunday Tribune and the Treasurers column in the New Telegraph newspapers. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television. He can be reached on +234 807 552 5533 or by email: turnpotpot @gmail.com
