It is painful that the T-Pain Nigerians are going through seems to be endless. If it will eventually come to an end one day, the end isn’t in sight. The end to T-Pain or, if you like, of T-Pain, is not known to “T” himself. Nigerians just have to endure, perhaps till 2027, when the time will be ripe to do away with T-Pain, to re-examine our political sense, and to re-chart our political course.
But endurance has limit, and one needs to live to endure. My fear is that I don’t know how many Nigerians will be alive to make that political re-examination. And even for those who will be alive, I still do not know if they will have the strength to re-chart a new political course. The political choice made by the few Nigerians among us (37 per cent or thereabouts) who elected this APC President that now subjects us to T-Pain is the most terrible political miscarriage, as far as I know, in Nigerian history.
I don’t know how Nigerians came up with this T-Pain appellation which is, in other words, Tinubu’s pain-inflicting-presidency. It must have been through Nigerians’ unique ability to joke over hardship as if hardship is a norm. But I do know T-Pain is a name of an American singer and songwriter, Faheem Rashad Najm. Najm is professionally known as T-Pain. He was born and raised in Tallahassee—the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. His stage name is said to be short for “Tallahassee Pain” which he chose because of the hardships he experienced while living there.
Like Najm, Nigerians in Nigeria chose T-Pain to describe how painful it is to experience hell on earth under Tinubu and to tell the whole world what they are going through in Nigeria. We read a report from Peoples Gazette: “The president has been very sad and not hiding his frustration over how quickly the so-called Tpain label was allowed to spread on social media.” That is to say, the president is not only making a terrible history, he is reading the harsh judgement of history while in office. Let him be sad; he should also be frustrated. Nigerians are also sad and frustrated—courtesy of T-Pain.
But how can someone be sad for deliberately inflicting pains—which he can stop to inflict—on those he should make happy? Perhaps, the president deliberately chose to be sad. If the president is truly sad, all he needs to do is to reverse those dangerous policies that continue to fuel Nigerians’ woes and pains. He should reverse the hike in fuel price that consequentially fuels T-Pain. The president can re-write his history if what he is reading about himself is truly unpalatable.
Peoples Gazette further reports that the president was said to be “mostly angry with unpatriotic people who sit on social media to call him names without offering any unique solutions of their own but only to malign the government”. We are actually learning a lot from this regime through T-Pain. If given opportunity to teach Civil Education in our basic schools, T-Pain (personified) would teach pupils that one becomes unpatriotic for wailing while being flogged.
The president reportedly complains like complaint king about those sitting on social media to call him names without proffering any unique solutions. Does the president need any advice anymore after being advised for a thousand and one times? Could it be that the president has an axe to grind with those sitting on social media? If that is the case, I am not one of those. Here again is my advise to the president for the umpteenth time: “reverse those dangerous policies with devil face; for, they lack human face.”
If the president could not tolerate those sitting on social media and could not take advice from them due to their mannerisms, he should humble himself to take advice from those in the ivory towers who, by expertise, are in a vantage position to advise government and show it direction. Or are Nigerian academics also unpatriotic? Are the rulers in Abuja paranoiac of the country’s intellectuals whom they employ and pay? But because T-Pain has completely impoverished and pulverized Nigerian intellectuals, our rulers find it demeaning to take advice from them. If ASUU makes real its threat to embark on strike in few days to come, the union, for sure, will be tagged unpatriotic in the totalitarian dictionary of T-Pain regime.
If the presidency is in search of unique advice, it should read some of the recommendations in the papers presented at the recently concluded State of the Nation Conference organized by ASUU in Abuja. Or does the government think its intellectuals are intellectually impoverished so much so that they are bereft of ideas? The president who is pained by being labelled T-Pain should read the conference communique. The president and his co-travellers—in T-Paining Nigerians—should read the paper titled “Patriotism and Sacrifice: Twin Catalysts for National Development” by Adam Muhammad and my humble self. In that paper, we advise Nigerian rulers that for the country to develop, they (rulers) need to be patriotically intoxicated and prioritize national interests above personal and foreign interests.
The president should patriotically sack himself from Ministry of Petroleum as Minister. The patriotism which he claims those sitting on social media lack should be extended to the NNPC (or is it NNPCL?) which is overdue for overhaul. The overhauling should be extended to its managers whose actions and/or inactions have continued to push the price of fuel northwards. I learnt the NNPC is providing free medical eye care outreach in some communities in Lagos. Kudos to NNPC! But it should extend its free eye care outreach to all other communities across the country so that every Nigerian could see the pump price clearly each time it is reviewed upward to increase our doses of T-Pain.
Dear President Tinubu, whether you like it or not, T-Pain will continue to gain widespread popularity. Not only that, numerous derivatives and inflections will be derived from it as long as Nigerians continue to be T-Pained by your T-Painful regime. You still have all the time to change the narrative. T-Pain can become T-Relieve, I hope so. It all depends on your policies and how they are prioritized and their philosophical underpinnings.
*Salaudeen can be reached at [email protected]
