Two pastors whom I still respect, but not worship, in Nigerian Christianity are Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Citadel Global Community Church a.k.a. The Latter Rain Assembly and Pastor Sam Adeyemi of Daystar Christian Centre. If you are a social media dilettante like me, you have likely come across the trending videos of pastors speaking truth not only to power, but also to Nigerians.

In his characteristic manner of an uncommon and passionate courage, Bakare narrated in a video how he received a call from President Bola Tinubu while having lunch with Fola Adeola, the Guaranty Trust Bank co-founder, inviting him to his place. In the entire narration, what struck me was what Bakare said he told Tinubu pointedly: “Don’t play God.”

Sam Adeyemi, on his part, has been all out about culture, politics and leadership. In one of his terrific videos, Adeyemi berated Nigerians’ “cultural taste for poverty”. He warned that Nigerians must collectively undergo a mental transformation from hero-worshipping to turn the country’s underdevelopment around. I agree with both Bakare and Adeyemi. Nigeria’s crisis of modernisation is not just about corrupt and innately inept leadership; it is also about a dangerously timid population. They both remind me of that incredible speech by a former United States President, Barack Obama, during his historic state visit to Ghana on July 11, 2009, about 16 years ago. “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions,” Obama declared. Obama concluded his speech saying, “With strong institutions and a strong will, I know that Africans can live their dreams in Nairobi and Lagos, Kigali, Kinshasa, Harare, and right here in Accra.”

Almost two decades after those hopeful remarks, Nigeria has changed for the worse. Instead of sweet dreams, we are awake all night long, drowning in a cocktail of high inflation, sluggish growth, and rising poverty. Our youths are hobbled by high unemployment rates, limited access to quality education and skills development. Daily, they face unimaginable police brutality and human rights abuses. Our children, too, are struggling to survive the pangs of malnutrition, lack of access to education, and exposure to violence and poverty. All because leadership has moved from a grandstanding persona as it was with the Obasanjo administration to an utterly inept and clueless rule as it was with the Jonathan government to a now divine emperor, Bola Tinubu, who equates himself with the state. “L’etat, c’est moi”: “I am the state”, King Louis XIV of France famously declared.

Sadly, my reading of Nigeria’s political barometer indicates a stormy politics ahead of 2027. If there is any country where Pareto’s theory of the circulation of elites is so entrenched, that country must be Nigeria. The theory describes the continuous replacement of one elite group by another in a society, driven by the decline of the old elite and the rise of a new one. This process, it is said, is not necessarily revolutionary, but rather a natural cycle where existing elites lose their power and new individuals or groups ascend to positions of influence. Old wines in new bottles, you would say.

But Obama offers a solution to the problem of Africa’s Big Men syndrome in that epoch-making speech to the Ghanaian parliament at the Accra International Conference Centre. “And here is what you must know, he says, “The world will be what you make of it. You have the power to hold your leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people.”

Now, enough is enough for Nigeria’s rulership curse. The country has had enough of the two types of awful elites Pareto identified: “lions”, who rely on force and tradition, and “foxes”, who are cunning and innovative. When ordinary folks in my ethnic group, the Yoruba, are lost for answers to any life challenge, they’ll always ask the question: Ta lase? Who have we wronged? It is simple: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves,” were the words spoken by Cassius to Brutus, to persuade him that they are not bound by fate to be subservient to Caesar, but can actively shape their circumstances in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Nigerians must actively shape their circumstances to live as human beings. It’s not going to be a walk in the park, Sam Adeyemi said that much in one of the video clips. And the late Afro music legend, Fela, sang it nicely in Shuffering and Shmiling in 1978. “Suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer, suffer Suffer for world. Na your fault be that. Me, I say: na your fault be that.” To get true leaders, two faults must give way: religion and ethnicity. Fela’s unforgettable lyrics again: “Suffer, suffer for world, enjoy for heaven. Christians go dey yab, ‘In Spiritum Heavinus’. Muslims go dey call “Allahu Akbar”.

We need real leaders, not arrogant rulers. It is said that the challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humour, but without folly. Do those politicians ganging up in Abuja in an alliance to send Tinubu back to Lagos possess these leadership values, too? But when all is said and done, how will history remember his time and rule?

Another divine emperor was here. Every empire in history had an expiry date. Tinubu’s will surely come one day. How about the day after?