Let me tell you a true story.
There is a 12-year-old boy in my neighborhood, the son of my good friend. Brilliant boy. One day I overheard him praying. And what was he praying?
“God, let my father divorce my mother. Or let my father just fall down and die.”
I was shocked. I called him aside.
I said, “Why would you pray such evil against your own father? Does your father not pay your school fees?”
He said, “He does.”
“Does he not feed you, clothe you, house you? When you are sick, does he not take care of you?”
He went quiet, then admitted, “Sir, he has never failed in all those things.”
“So why do you want him dead?”
Then he opened up. He told me two things that broke my heart for his ignorance.
ONE: “Whenever I am sick, my father takes me to the hospital. The doctor will give me painful injections and bitter drugs. When we get home, my father insists I must chew the bitter drugs raw, not swallow with sweet. He says it must digest quickly for me to get well. But my mother’s secret boyfriend is different. When I am sick, he does not take me to the hospital. He takes me to Chicken Republic. He buys me ice cream, meat pie and Coca-Cola. He makes me happy. So I love him more.”
TWO: “My father drives a big car but he refuses to buy me my own car. He keeps saying, ‘My son, be patient; time is not ripe. We are building our house. When the foundation is solid, I will buy you a car that you will not need to push every morning.’ But my mother’s boyfriend bought me a fairly used bicycle, so I enjoy riding it around the street while my father’s car is parked.”
“So you see, Sir,” he said proudly, “if that man becomes my father, life will be sweet.”
I looked at the boy and wept for him. He thought his father was wicked because his father gave him bitter medicine. He thought his mother’s lover loved him because he gave him ice cream while sick.
He did not know his father was saving him. He did not know ice cream when you have typhoid kills faster.
He did not know his father’s parked car is not stinginess; it is wisdom—because if his father buys him a car before building a house, they will both sleep inside the car.
And the bicycle from the lover? It has no brake. It will throw him inside the gutter tomorrow.
THIS IS THE STORY OF NIGERIA TODAY.
This is exactly how many Nigerians are reasoning about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and 2027.
For 40 years, we had fathers who gave us ice cream when we were sick with subdiabetic cancer. They gave us cheap petrol and cheap dollars at CBN window for their friends, and we clapped. But the sickness was getting worse—reserves collapsing, debt service at 97% of revenue, Naira printed N22.7 trillion illegally.
Then one father came and said, “No more ice cream. You must take this painful injection called subsidy removal. You must chew this bitter drug called Forex Unification. It will be painful, but it will cure you.”
Now we are crying: “This man is wicked! Give us back the boyfriend who gave us rice and beans!”
Like the Israelites in the Bible:
> Numbers 11:5-6 – “We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons… but now our soul is dried away.”
They forgot they were slaves in Egypt. They remembered only fish and cucumbers. They wanted to go back to slavery because of stomach.
Many Nigerians today want to go back to Egypt in 2027 because of rice and beans.
They forget:
– Egypt was where subsidy money went to private jets, not to hospitals.
– Egypt was where we had 4 exchange rates for cronies.
– Egypt was where our children had no student loan, no future.
Tinubu is not perfect. His reforms are painful. His borrowing must be watched and disciplined—yes.
But he is the father giving bitter drugs so the child will live. The lovers who gave us ice cream before gave us diabetes that is killing us today.
You don’t kill a father because he is giving you medicine.
You don’t abandon a building project because plastering is dusty.
You don’t abort a surgery midway because blood is coming out—you allow the surgeon to finish.
2027 is not about rice and beans. It is about whether we want to be healed or we want to remain sick but sweet in the mouth.
The boy in my story is 12. His ignorance can be excused. But we are 64 years old as a nation. We should know better than to trade our future for ice cream.
Let him finish what he started.
Ẹní bá fi iṣu tí kò jinná gún’yán, o di dandan kó jẹ iyán tó lẹ́mọ.
Interpretation
Whoever prepares pounded yam with yams that are not fully cooked will certainly eat lumpy pounded yam.
Wisdom
Be patient; Some things take time. Yes, we often become so impatient that we wish the things around us to happen overnight.
