Sir: Nigeria is very much a country in pain. While the few optimists remaining in Nigeria would describe the pains as those of childbirth, the numberless pessimists, optics and skeptics would beg to differ.

They would argue that all they can hear is a death rattle. The transition period was always going to be tough. After the previous government which was very much a disaster waiting to happen huffed and puffed to no avail, Nigeria was left with a mountain to climb. To say that the process has been exhausting and exasperating is to put it mildly.

President Bola Tinubu is the man on the hot seat now, and the early signs would seem to confirm the worst fears of those who sounded the alarm as soon as it became clear that he would be president. His supporters may have a couple of points arguing that he inherited an utter disaster, is less than a year in office, and is trying his best in the circumstance, but he is not completely blameless in the making of the disaster that Nigeria has become.

He ripped away the contentious fuel subsidy regime in his inaugural address and while Nigerians initially adjusted to their new reality, their optimism about a possible new direction for the country quickly crashed on the shoals of reality. As the prices of basic goods and services have soared, catching large families cold, protests have erupted in some major Nigerian cities as economic conditions have worsened. In Ibadan, which is very much in the heart of the Southwest where the President hails from, some protesters even hurled some unprintable words at the President.

It would be cruel to pin all of Nigeria’s problems on a man who has been in office for less than a year. Many of the problems Nigerians are experiencing today are decades long. Some of the challenges that have exploded today had boiled in the background for years before the President mounted the saddle.

But some frustrations channelled at him are justified. He has always been a key member of the infernal All Progressives Congress that has held the country to ransom in the past eight years. His desperation to get into political office put off many people who saw in him the kind of politicians that Nigeria no longer needed. Poverty and insecurity sweeps Nigeria at a rate not recently witnessed, and it is a natural for Nigerians to direct a lot of ire towards the number one citizen of the country.

On his part, he has called for patience and perseverance, describing the situation as the storm before the calm. But Nigerians so brokenly betrayed recently are reluctant to trust anyone again, especially someone who is cut from the same cloth as those that have previously ruined their experience of government, being someone whom they have suspected from the beginning.

As hunger continues to gnaw at their innards with ferocious intensity, Nigerians suspect those who govern them. They suspect every word, every action spoken in and from the halls of power. Most damningly, Nigerians suspect those who are asking them to be patient with those who govern them.

The 2023 general elections and the buildup thereto showed a country where citizens were finally painfully aware of their predicament and the power they possess to shake up things. The elections and everything else that happened since then may have left a sour taste. But one suspects that it is only a matter of time before the country witnesses something wholesome at the hands of those who are sorely tired of being sitting ducks for those intent on burning down the country.

• Ike Willie-Nwobu, Ikewilly9@gmail.com