The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Commander In Chief Of The Armed Forces, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) has spoken to the nation, but the nay sayers, who prefer the strike over the peaceful resolution of their complaints, were not impressed.

Again, lots of fellow compatriots, including the ambivalent ones, are cynics, who always criticise without ever giving a solution. Such a fastidious lot are impossible to please, whatever one may do, and however one tries, to please them.

That should be of little worry to Mr. President, because whatever he says, they would still berate him and claim that he has said ‘nothing’. The wise people among the Hausa have a saying that ‘idan ka fada ruwa, maqiyinka zaice ka tada qura’ (if you fall into water, your enemy would accuse you of raising dust). Or ‘ko tsokar jikinka ka yanka ka bah maqiyinka, zaice wari take’ (even if you cut and give your flesh to an enemy, he would still say it stinks).

I said the ‘wise people’ not the ‘wise Hausa people’, because my Hausa teacher from class one to class three in secondary school, was a non Hausa person who hailed from the then Benue/Plateu State, and understood and spoke the Hausa language fluently. In addition to his mother tongue, which he also understood and spoke just as fluently.

The point is that those saying he has nothing to say would neither give a tangible solution or the way out nor appreciate whatever the statement contains, since these are not what are before them. So, it is best to ignore such impossible critiques and concentrate on doing other things for the nation. They would never take the positives in and out of the speech, preferring to see it through their fixed narrow ways.

We cannot run away from the truth that times are indeed hard in Nigeria for most people, a negative development which started decades ago, but the protesters should look beyond what is not in the speech and focused about it, with the understanding it seriously deserves. Besides, the suffering is not limited to Nigeria, but a global problem. 

Even though my understanding of the English language is rudimentary, I said about, NOT in, your speech. That Mr. President has spoken to the nation shows that he is deeply concerned with what was negatively happening in the nation in the name of ‘peaceful strike’, which the sponsors, organisers, supporters and the gullible executors disingenuously term as, ‘a day of rage’.

They want to give reasons for the vile actions of many criminals among the protesters, ignoring the fact that you cannot rationalise crime anytime by making excuses for it, simply because you or a your loved ones are not victims. But sooner or later its consequences are bound to reach you or both of you.

For the solution to the problems that have been building over the decades, all grown up citizens need to do is look into the mirror. And what looked at us from the mirror is the answer, as no one could exempt himself from blame in giving the country a bad reputation.

Look at Nigeria, a country that is supposed to be among the major developed nations in the world, is still a land where constant electricity and water supplies are considered luxuries beyond most of the population. This is in spite of the enormous human and material resources that God has made

abundant in the country.

Another thing is the supposed religiosity of the nation, which a global survey by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) some years ago, found to be the most religious in the world. Another global survey, by a different organisation, found the land to be home to the highest number of Muslims who have learned, and could recite the Holy Quran, off head, above all the Arab countries, which are Muslims dominated.

Nigeria is also a country where almost everyone is waiting for their chance to ‘eat’. Meaning to ‘steal’ from the Commonwealth. And ‘eat’ we do with unsatisfied appetite, because of the craze for money accumulation, which has become the passion among those opportune to ‘eat’, regardless of how and from where. And we tend to abandon old friends, and replace them with the new ones we just make.

A friend and colleague became a ‘big’ man with his appointment to head a very important federal commission. He stopped answering the phone calls of yours faithfully. But before the appointment, he was on my head most of the time to take him to my then oga, who was a very top man in the country. Whenever he said he wanted to see my oga, I knew he wanted money, and if it happened to be at the end of the year, then house rent he would ask.

I never failed to take him to the oga, so much that the boss, known to be very free with his money, once complained to me, asking ‘why do you always bring people to me’? I simply answered that I brought people because of his known generosity, coupled with my knowledge that they were not cheats.

However, when the friend was unceremoniously suspended from office three years after the appointment, he it was who called me to book an appointment for him with my boss, the same generous man. I agreed without hesitation, but the oga got angry when I passed the request. He just told me to ‘forget it’, complaining that ‘it is now that he knows we exist’.

In any case, the President Tinubu speech, which the protesters condemned as ‘empty’, acknowledged the difficulty that many Nigerians go through every day, and announced what measures the federal government has taken, and is taking, to alleviate the suffering in the land. The President also assured that there would be a reprieve from the hard times, when the economic measures put in place by the administration started to yield results. 

The protesters, many of who acted more like rioters, expected the President to reverse the subsidy removal, release Nnamdi Kanu and the abrogation of the 1999 Constitution of the country, among other demands. They heard none of that.

It has indeed been ‘a day of rage’ for the sponsors, organisers, supporters and the gullible executors, because they have expected Mr. President to capitulate to the evil agenda the strike action was all about. It was and still is about seeing the end of the administration and the destruction of our dear Nigeria. 

May God never grant those wishes, now or in the future, to whoever wants to do destroy the nation and the administration of whoever may be the number one citizen in the country.

Malam Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.