Nigeria Will Not Die For Their Comeback Tour
By Otega ‘The Tiger’ Ogra
/You Can’t Preach From a Pile of Ashes You Helped Light/
There is a particular breed of former power brokers who, having tasted relevance and lost it, now cosplay as revolutionaries, writing elegies and requiems for a country they once helped bleed. They say not every critic deserves an audience, but for this, I’ll speak.
I do know one thing, though… you do not get to light the fire and then sermonise over the ashes.
Their weekly essays and media junketing rounds should not be mistaken for rage. It is plain, simple revisionism. They attempt, hard as they try, to masquerade it as patriotism, but it reeks of projection. Yes, Nigeria may be in pain, but it is dishonest, almost wicked, to pretend that the decay began yesterday. And yes, many who should have healed her in the past chose instead to feed off the wound when they had the chance. In fact, some of the loudest mourners were the most efficient architects of the rot. You and I know them, and they know themselves.
I say to those who can hear… Nigeria is not dead, nor is it dying. But it had been bruised! Our Nigeria is now healing. Slowly. Surely. Steadily. This is despite those who once broke her, broke those under her care, and now write poems about the pieces.
Regardless of their diatribes, the Tinubu-Shettima administration is doing the hard, unpopular work of triage and rebuilding. Quietly. Deliberately. Without drama. I know this does not fit the poetic outrage some want to sell, but facts do not need applause. Time will tell, and future generations will hail the architect of this clinical surgery that is being done on our dear nation.
There is a reason these sudden prophets did not cry this loud when they sat in the seat of power. Their silence then was self-preservation, and their noise now is self-relevance.
KOKO OF THE MATTER: I personally do not deny the anger on their keyboards. Neither does my principal, President Bola Tinubu. However, we have chosen to confront this anger and the issues that have led to the malaise directly. We work through it, but we will not be lectured by those who had power and chose vengeance over vision or those who chose self-preservation in office rather than putting the needs of the many over theirs.
I say to this new breed of ‘politiprophets’: The Nigeria you mock is still home to millions waking up with fire in their bellies daily, building, fighting, and fixing—without noise, applause, or hashtags. It seems easier to curse and post than to craft and build. But if words were enough, Nigeria would be paradise by now.
Our job is not just to describe the decay but to disrupt it. We must bend systems, not just burn them with adjectives. We must enter rooms, not just shout from rooftops. We must rid the nation of its cabals in almost every sector. It is slow, complex, and unflattering. But it is necessary, and the positive results are beginning to show.
Yes, con men trend. But reformers still walk this land, and some lead this administration from top to bottom. You may choose to scroll past them because outrage travels faster than progress, but that doesn’t change the positive progress.
I will never defend what deserves condemnation. But I will never declare Nigeria a corpse while millions still fight for its pulse.
To those still fighting for Nigeria in schools, markets, farms, communities, and offices – home & abroad, President Bola Tinubu sees you. Our administration believes in you. And I refuse to sing a funeral song for a country and its beautiful people still breathing, still trying, still rising – against all odds. This is a reckoning.
Finally, those who seek Nigeria’s failure in the face of necessary reforms to put her back on the trajectory of sustainable prosperity and make her take her rightful place in the comity of Nations, kindly note that Nigeria will not die for your comeback tour.
~ Otega ‘The Tiger’ Ogra
Proudly Nigerian.
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