The US state of Texas is about 6,600 miles away from Abuja. It’s one of the spots I call home. When Texans talk Texas, they think cowboys. I have immense admiration for cowboys because they possess impeccable work ethics. Cowboys are ready to die working. Although they are easy-going; don’t mistake their swing-easy swagger for rusty recumbency. In the bones of an average cowboy are tenacity and toughness. Cowboys aren’t usually big and boisterous talkers; their taciturnity is not for lack of what to say. They have got plenty held close to their chests. They are wired to tarry until the fullness of time to speak and are configured to wait for the promptness of the same to swing into action. And when they do, they aren’t afraid to step on toes especially if it is for the public good. Cowboys’ actions often make men marvel. I love this breed of beings.

I’ll pull back journeying down the path of dumping an effusive praise on President Bola Tinubu trying to brand him a cowboy. Not just yet. Ability to wait and watch events unfold and seasons unwind is a virtue that I have chosen to exercise. I want to watch more of his presidential ways and executive will as Nigeria’s ‘tear-rubber’ Commander-In-Chief. However, what I’ll express with definitiveness at this time is that with his actions in the last month, this President is not the Tinubu of Bourdillon, not the Jagaban of Borgu, and not the Asiwaju of Lagos that many Nigerians, especially his traducers and sworn adversaries, expect to see. This man is as bold as a lion.  And in the manifesting boldness, he’s stepping on big toes to the applause of many, and to the shame of brutes in Nigeria.

Nigeria is a flummox and a distempered hectare of hydra-headed distemperature. The system is a surreal spread of disorder, malady, and off-kilter ailments. To lead the country and do so successfully requires a whiff of candid and concentrated courage. To champion her cause through sane and sensible governance and do so triumphantly needs a definite determination. If any man desires to captain the titanic and not wimp one minute, that being must be bigly bold, and be prepared to deal with bloody brutes.

The ubiquitous and poignantly piercing presence of Nigeria’s bastion of brutes spares no space and spots in our politics and polity. In the fissures of our civil service are many uncivil brutes who lace the heart-and-soul of our financial sector, and dwell in the vital organs of all arms of government. In the crevices of Nigeria’s parastatals, these brutes are innumerable. Their bold and bruising feet are crudely dipped in Nigeria’s crude oil where they aid bunkering and sponsor pipeline busting. They have endlessly leeched on the profitable lifelines in this sector of our economy where they become billionaires in varying currencies. That moola might make them immovable and unshakeable principalities that have troubled Nigeria for eons. While Nigeria continues to reel in a stranglehold of smothering economic kamikaze; they glee.  Their god is their belly; and love of money their interceding priests. They don’t give a hoot that Nigerians daily pant for breath under the clubbing, drubbing and slogging of money miasma. They aren’t fazed or discomfited with the reality that the Giant of Africa remains an emaciating elephant in the forest of despair and pervasive malaise. These brutes pray for no conceivable or visible end to the grotesque and vile picture of the state of our nation. It looks like now; they have found a man who’s not their equal.