Baba we are sorry, please come back

We Nigerians are actually very fetish and believe almost everything. That is evident in so many ritual killings, babalawos, mallams and other soothsayers who run very lucrative businesses; swindling people and making them believe they can give them heaven here on earth. This can also be supported by the MMM scheme that consumed so many Nigerians despite warnings and clear signals that it was fraudulent. So we Nigerians believe in magic and wonders. At the same time we are very diverse and unfortunately our diversity has not really impacted positively on us but rather, it continues to be divided along cultures and religion.

If you produce a candidate and present to a hall of Nigerians, you can tell those who will vote for him or against by simply counting the number of northerners and southerners and if the southerners are more in number and your candidate is southern, be sure that he will get the majority votes. If your candidate is Muslim and there are more Muslims in the hall, be sure that he will get the majority votes. Again if you present 2 candidates and Mr A has more money than candidate B, then it’s ‘oshe baba’ for the richer Mr A and he will win because he gave more money. So, Baba don’t be disturbed by whether it is northerners or southerners who are for or against you, Ai Baba you know all this.

We Nigerians Baba, believed you could do magic and in your first 6 months you will turn Abuja into Dubai, Lagos into Los Angeles, make dollar our local currency, make all APC politicians rich enough to dole out dollars and so on and so forth. We actually believed you could give us 24hrs uninterrupted power supply, eradicate poverty, HIV, and even make all married men faithful to their wives, and just as Valentine’s day is approaching, all husbands and boyfriends will give their partners brand new cars as Valentine’s gifts because of how buoyant our economy is by now.

We expected you to provide all cattle in the north with salaries and turn all rivers in the south into wine. ‘Haba Baba, yaya ka mana haka’? Why have you not done all these in your almost 2 years in power?
Baba we believed that by now, Nigerians will be so afraid of ‘kwarruption’ that we will be afraid of inhaling more than our fair share of oxygen and scared of sending out too much carbon dioxide for fear of polluting Nigerian grass! You turned PMB from GMB and that’s when we stopped believing in the delusion of magic. Haba Baban Zara!

Being believers of magic and doers of ‘one chance’, we have overnight all become wailers as you have failed to produce the midas touch that we envisaged you held tightly in your fist all the while you campaigned and showed us a symbolic tight fist. Now that you have simply fallen ill as if you are not human; (well I hope you now realise we believed you to be a superman), some Nigerians are wishing you dead or plotting for your removal. We have forgotten how unsafe and scared we used to be, in just stepping out to go to church, or to the mosque, or to school, or to work or even to the market.

We have forgotten the carnage of human flesh that filled the streets and the villages in Nigeria. We have forgotten how almost everyone was afraid of being kidnapped once he or she steps out.
Baba ai we have forgotten the fuel queues we spent days and nights in trying to buy a few litres of petrol just to be able to go to work. We have forgotten how Nigerians raped our treasury and fed themselves rich, spraying dollars at their weddings and building multimillion dollar mansions for themselves and their children.

We have forgotten that external reserves were depleted from estimates of a whopping 60 billion dollars to about 25 billion dollars and hence the naira’s free fall. We don’t appreciate the fight you have waged against corruption and that for the first time in a long time, government officials that looted are brought to book and their loot is being recovered.
We don’t appreciate the fact that our refineries are being repaired and modular ones are being built and hopefulky by 2019, fuel importaion will be ended. So are our railways being put in order, abandoned roads and bridges are being built, and efforts are intensified in boosting agriculture and local food production to eliminate waste on importation.

We don’t appreciate the fact that multinationals and other businesses are being made to pay taxes and other payments due to our internal revenue which were previously just waived or corruptibly left uncollected. We failed to see that foreign investors are over subscribing to our euro bond issuance because of investor confidence as our foreign reserves have grown by an estimated 1-3 billion dollars (including excess crude).

We have failed to see the decisive steps you have taken to quell the crisis in Southern Kaduna and the Boko Haram menace. Baba ejo!
Now that you are sick Baba and we are faced with the fear of losing you, we have come to realise that you mean a lot to us and we are sorry for all our bickering and Nigerianness. Now we have seen that if you are not around, our politicians will fight and fight and run Nigeria aground as you are their only unifying factor. Baba we are afraid that if you don’t come back, Nigerians will rewind Nigeria.

All Nigeria’s geo-political zones will ‘Brexit’ wo! Biafra will fight, Oduduwa will go, and so will Shekau take Borno, Adamawa, Yobe and Taraba states. Please Baba, for Nigeria’s sake, for Awo, Zik, Ikoku and Sardauna’s sake, for Col Ali and all the people that lost their lives fighting for Nigeria and saving lives, please come back Baba we are sorry. And oh Baba, Antie Aisha too is sorry. Come back Baba, we need you, come back.

Tahir is Talban Bauchi