Another Day Of Sober Reflection!

The Insight by Lateef Adewole

I woke up to a big surprise yesterday, 23rd of June, 2023. My younger friend and business partner, in ‘conspiracy’ with my wife and children, decided to wake me up with the sound of ‘panranran’ (those who know know). They have gathered friends and family members from our neighbourhood to wake me up with blissful birthday wishes, greetings and celebration. It was a surprise because I am not a person who does such a thing but they must have ‘taken laws into their hands’. Their further posts and commentaries on social media further blew it open. I received numerous commemorative messages, calls, and gifts. I felt valued and important. Thanks to all who made the day a memorable one.

As a person, while I appreciate the gift of life and being alive to witness every cycle of birthdays, I always choose to be moderate in my celebrations and funfare. I often chose such moments to do more of self evaluation and sober reflection. May be I take life a bit ‘too seriously’, not because I lack, but because I see lack all around me. How do I mean?

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There was this joke on social media during and immediately after the end of the last administration. It demanded that Nigerians need to be awarded with “Certificate of Survival”, for whoever survived those gruelling eight years we just exited under the previous administration. Why would any one conceive that, even if it was a joke? It’s because, like the Yorubas would say “enikan lo mo”. That was period in our national life that many would loathe to ever witnessed again.

Where do we start from? That survival had nothing to do with not only insecurities that actually took lives of hundreds of thousands of people through terrorists’ attacks, mass murders, mass abductions, ritual killings and sundry killings by gunmen, whether in “uniform or not”, but the economic pains inflicted by all manners of policies, actions and inactions of the government. Life was hellish.

As if what we experienced from 2015 to 2022 was not enough, Nigerians’ suffering was capped with the devilish cash confiscation policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from January 2023, under the leadership of Mr. Godwin Emefiele (now in custody to answer for various criminal allegations against him). For over three months, Nigerians saw hell, not because they needed or asked for help from government to survive and was not offered, but because the same government that was meant to serve and protect them, decided to kill them, not literally alone, people actually died, because their money was illegitimately seized by the government through the CBN.

In my entire life, I have never witnessed a time like that. People were made to return their cash in old naira notes to banks, only to be denied collecting new notes. People had millions of naira which they couldn’t touch, while they wallow in hunger and many died in the process for various reasons. Nigerians were buying their own currency just like trading in foreign currencies, but with the same currency, and at a cut-throat margin as high as 30-40%. Imagine collecting N700,000. when you actually withdrew one million naira. The balance N300,000. was the sacrifice you had to pay to get that cash. How could any business or person survive with that? But many survived. Many died.

So, why won’t I celebrate? Why won’t I give glory to the Almighty God Who spared my life through all that, and still here today to witness another era? I thank God for my life. Alhamdulillahi.

My conservative approach to birthday celebrations is because of my experience. “Eni weju leru n ba”. A jolly friend of mine once told me that I “suffer what I suffer” because I feel like or want to change the world. That I always feel like it’s my responsibility to make the world a better place. So, every time I look around and there are things I felt are not going right, it affects my thinking. Every time I see someone still struggling with life, it breaks my heart. Everytime I see a person suffering from poverty, I feel pain.

Whenever I reflect on this, I keep wondering if I was not unnecessarily burdening myself and my mind with problems beyond me and my control? I wondered if I wasn’t wrong stressing myself on why the world should be a better place for larger majority, even if not for all. Each time I tried to slow down or attempt to stop, I never found peace with myself. My spirit becomes restless. I hear voices in my head telling me “how could you be comfortable while people are in distress?”

I am an Engineer by training. I worked and do business in Oil and Gas for over two decades. By the grace of God, I am not hungry, even if I am not rich. I can live comfortably within my means because I cut my coat according to my cloth. May be, I could also have afforded to live larger if I could “kala” enough to “mind my business” only, an euphemism for being ‘stingy’. Unfortunately, my conscience won’t let me be.

I had the fortune of having to work, as an employee, with a lot of people in the course of doing my job. Working in downstream sector, with a company with a spread of retail outlets all over the country. Every region I was posted to, I had to cover multiple states. This afforded me the opportunity to have been to and know many parts of this country. I travelled across the country by road, driving myself. In the process, I met and related with both very rich, rich, middle-class, poor and very poor people regularly.

Apart from my own personal childhood experience of being poor, I saw people who lived in poverty, far beyond my imagination. Sadly, these are in a very great majority. All those years, I had exited my own penury and lived comfortably. Yet, I felt the pains of those who lived in it. This is not exclusive to any particular region, tribe or religion. It is possible that poverty levels differ from state to state and region to region, but poor people are everywhere, and in every region and tribe.

It is such nightmarish experience that would not leave me alone. Many had wondered why I write conscientiously for some years since I stopped working for a company and had the freedom to publicly expressed my opinions no matter how caustic they are to the government of the day. It is because I felt the people of Nigeria deserve better than we are getting. Nigeria and Nigerians have no business being so poor as we are, to the extent of becoming the poverty capital of the world. Not with the abundance of ‘everything’ (with emphasis) that the God has blessed us with. Well, except ofcourse, leadership.

I love Nigeria. I see it as a sleeping lion. Nigeria needs to wake up, stand and take its rightful place in the comity of nations. We cannot continue like this. I want a country that all Nigerians will be proud of. Not one her citizens do marathon fasting and prayer to ‘japa’ from. Not one her people will accept just about any country, no matter how lowly, even more terrible than Nigeria, just to leave their country. I want a Nigeria whose citizens will not be rolling on the floor of Heathrow International Airport, or JFK or any other, in celebration of leaving their fatherland. I want a country her citizens will not prefer to be in jail abroad rather than return back home. Nigeria has no business being such country. “Se owon epo ni abi ti a i r’owo ra?”

Today, the amount of natural resources yet to be explored and used, are more than the ones we already have. We are blessed with nearly any imaginable mineral resource that could be found anywhere in the world, even if it is in small quantity. We have some of the best weather conditions globally, suitable for all manners of things required for our existence and survival. We have soils that support agriculture and other purposes for human use. We have land, water and air that are good for whatever we need them for. Why should such a country and her people be poor?

Apart from the natural resources, our best assets are the people. Nigerians, in our natural elements, are some of the best humans around the world. We are highly intelligent people. There is hardly any profession that a Nigerian would not be found among the topmost experts. We excel in any endeavour that we put our minds to. We are good in nature, patient and resilient. How many countries can still be standing if their people go through what we go through in Nigeria and they would not have bursted?

We saw the “little things” that resulted in Arab Spring that swept away leaders of some countries some years ago. Those were infinitesimal when juxtaposed with our burden as a people in Nigeria. Yet, we have remained patient with our leaders, endured endlessly or ‘japa’ at worst. The last administration was the end of it. We began to lose hope completely.

This was why I was surprised at the shock that many people, friends, colleagues and associates, expressed about my position all through the last elections and the transition we just had, in the last one and half years, since declaration of political ambitions by politicians started. As a public commentator who has been very vocal and critical of the misgovernance we saw in the last administration of the former President Buhari, who was a president on APC platform, many could not understand why I would do what I did.

It was kind of becoming “hip” at some point to support a certain candidate. Seeing me chose, supported, and vigorously campaigned for the Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu (from being an aspirant to becoming the candidate), was like I had committed a sacrilege. On daily basis, I was bashed. I was engaged endlessly in debates as to how wrong I was and how I had departed from my path of loving Nigeria because I supported him. All explanations as to why, fell on deaf ears. It was like a “war”. Well, one candidate called it “religious war” sha!

However, I stuck to my gun. I wrote copiously many times to analyse the situation we were in Nigeria at the time, the kind of solutions we needed to bring the country back from the brink and the kind of leader who has the requisite quality, capacity, competence, courage, political will and wherewithal that could make that happen. I doubt many of such ardent critics were swayed, let alone convinced. I had to live with it.

By the grace of God and a dint of hard work, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu won the party ticket against all odds to become the party flag bearer, he went into the most competitive presidential election with unprecedented number of forces and factors working against him, and won. Against all the threats to his swearing in, he took over the mantle of leadership 27 days ago and took, not only Nigeria, by storm, but the world. His short leadership of the country has been phenomenal. Tinubu and Nigeria have been most talked about globally in the last four weeks.

Fortunately, many who did not support him, like those I also had to contend with for about one year, have begun to see for themselves and are shocked at what’s really happening. Many ‘honourable’ ones have been confessing as to how wrong they were about him all through the electioneering process. Many spoke out publicly to praise the feats he has achieved in a very short time. Others did so in private. I have been having a sense of satisfaction about all of the actions of his administration so far. I look forward to real fulfilment when all these reforms begin to translate to the betterment of the people, my constituency. I can’t wait to see smiles on the faces of Nigerians.

It must be noted that nothing can be perfect. Only God is. So, no one should expect perfections from Tinubu or his government. All Nigerians cannot and will not suddenly be millionaires or rich. No. All over the world, including the most advanced countries, there are wretched people. Their percentage is what distinguishes one country from another. And their media never showed such parts to the outside world. Their citizens also do not denigrate their country publicly by speaking ill of their country, out of their patriotism.

These are complete opposite to what we have here where some people, public figures, private citizens, media houses, and so on, have made it their duties to run down Nigeria, for cash, kind or fun. No matter how upset one is about what has been going on in the country for decades, it is the height of unpatriotism for citizens to go anywhere, especially abroad, and be running down Nigeria. Our people are experts at doing that.

So, as Tinubu’s coming seems to be a silver lining in the dark cloud, we must all rise up to give him the needed support. “Eni to ni ki aye dara, oun nikan ko lo ma gbe be” (he who wants the world to be a better place, will not live there alone). The better he performs, the better for all of us. Why then won’t we work and pray hard for him to perform and succeed? We will all be better for it. This was my inspiration and driver for my unflinching support for him, with all his flaws. By the way, who doesn’t have theirs?

As I marked another year yesterday, I pray that God gives me long live, in good health and abundant wealth, to witness the positive transformation and progress of Nigeria under the current administration and many others that will follow after him. I pray that, by this time next year, when the administration would have just celebrated one year in office, things would have started getting better for the people and I will also have a course to celebrate.

May celebrations of good things never cease in our homes and our lives.

Thank you all once again.

May God continue to protect us and guide us aright.

God Bless Nigeria.

You can follow me on:
Twitter: @lateef_adewole
Facebook: Lateef Adewole
Email: lateefadewole23@gmail.com
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June 24, 2023.