By Fr Kelvin Ugwu

1. I write this carrying all of you in my heart. It is a very difficult time in the country with hunger and a high cost of living, but despite all that, I think one important thing we owe ourselves is to be able to tell ourselves the truth. We may lie to others, but we should never lie to ourselves.

2. It may be painful to admit this, but it does us more good if we admit the fact that this ongoing nationwide protest for good governance is never the solution. It will never address the root of the problem, it will not even scratch it, and we all know why.

3. Bad governance is the executives, represented by Tinubu; bad governance is legislatures, represented by Akpabio; bad governance is the Judiciary, represented by Ariwoola. To ask for an end to bad governance is to ask for an end to all those I mentioned and all those working with them. So, what we are doing is this, we run to those who are our problem and ask them to end themselves by themselves. I am sure you know how that sounds.

4. We had our best chances for a nationwide protest that would have created a significant difference, but we wasted them. First, they promised us that elections would be electronically transmitted. It was not done. We did not protest. Secondly, they started announcing the winner of an election that did not represent what we voted for. We saw it, but we did not protest. Thirdly, the day Tinubu took office, he told us that "Subsidy is gone." We heard it; instead of a nationwide protest, we even applauded it. If we had come out in mass and sat on the streets for days on any of the three issues I mentioned above, we wouldn't have been where we are today.

5. So let us accept this. We are the losers here because right now, they see us as toothless dogs barking. Don't deceive yourself with the narrative that they are scared of our protest. They just don't like the noise of barking toothless dogs, but they are not worried because toothless dogs can't bite. So, to sort them, they pour milk with sugar on the floor for the dogs to scramble, lick, and calm down. Interestingly, it always works even when we should ordinarily see such actions as insults.

6. As Chinua Achebe said, the problem of Nigeria is leadership. Let me add that the biggest problem of Nigeria is Nigerians knowing that her problem is leadership but will still use emotions, tribes, religion and other primitive sentiments to elect today's leaders during election time.

The only leaders who can truly give us what we are protesting for are those who do not have the desire to continue in this criminally established structure of leadership in Nigeria.

It means the leader will be ready to pull down the entire executive, legislative, and judicial system as we have them right now. You know quite alright that Tinubu can't do that. In fact, it is his comfort structure.

7.  The truth is that right now, you and I have entered one chance. If the protest will remove Tinubu from office, that will be great. If it will not, then everything is a waste of time. My advice is, kindly go home and let the hardship spur us to mentally strategize, without emotion or tribe and religion, on how best to vote for that candidate that is different and how we will fight and die to see that our votes are counted when next we have the opportunity to change these present leaders