“Baba Gba Ope Wa”: The Trend In Town That Must Worry PBAT And The APC.
There is a young skit maker who have been trending for some time now.
The young man is known for making prayer points from odd situations.
Naturally, Nigerians have since gotten used to giving thanks in all manner of situations, good or bad.
If someone lost a relation or loved one, even when such loved ones are considered too young to pass away, it has become traditional for us to console the bereaved by bringing up comparison between untimely deaths and perhaps, madness.
” E je ka dupe pe ko ya were”. Let us give thanks that the deceased didn’t run mad.
However, the kind of “ope” ( thanksgiving) that Nigerians, most especially, the Yoruba ethnic stock have resulted to, is the one Yorubas call” ope tipatipa”. A Thanksgiving brought about by an unfortunate resignation to fate. The one they also called”kamu”.
The minute by minute increase in the prices of food and essentials have made Nigerians to embrace the comic thanksgiving made popular by a certain young skit maker.
After making enough jests of the” e lo fokan bale ” and ” emi lo kan” declaration of candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigerians have found another piece of amusement in the”Baba gba ope wa ” phrase, even though, I must confess that the amusement is the kind perceived as ” oro buruku tohun terin”. An unpleasant amusement.
The”Baba gba ope wa ” trend is metaphoric.
The citizens are responding to the ever increasing rises in the prices of food and essentials in a way that mocks the president who promised them a better living..( ” lo fokan bale”).
It is a way to tell the president that instead of things to get better as he promised, things are rather getting worse.
A couple of days ago, I came across a young woman on TikTok who somehow amused me by the way she arranged her strange ” thanksgiving”.
” Lori Garri Kongo kan, 900 Naira, Baba gba ope wa. Lori crate eyin 3,600, Baba gba iyin wa. Lori Kongo rice 2,500 Naira, Baba gba ope wa…” and she went on and on.
Isn’t that hilarious?
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, without doubts is the most talked about president in the history of this Nation.
His road to securing the ticket of his party was filled with events.
The most remarkable is his declaration that the presidency of Nigeria is his life long ambition.
There is nothing wrong with that.
What is however wrong and disturbing is the fact that despite that declaration and seeming preparations to take the presidency, it does now appears like little or no attention was paid to what to do with the position after taking it.
Things start getting tougher from his first day in office and this is largely due to the removal of subsidies on Petroleum products without adequate plans for the aftermath of such removal.
A lot of the president’s accolytes have defended the president’s actions by saying all the three major presidential candidates promised to remove subsidies on Petroleum products.
That is true.
However, if you ask Atiku and Obi now, they will probably say that their approach would have been different from that of the president and you can’t fault that because, as we speak, they are not the president and they still enjoy benefits of the doubts that perhaps, they would have gotten it right.
President Tinubu actually confirmed that he begged for the job. He even went further to declare that no one should pity him.
The rate at which Nigerians from different ethnic background are disenchanted with his Government is alarming.
Hunger is a most effective unifier of people.
It is no doubt that since he assumed office, prices of essential commodities have sky rocketed.
The exchange rates are unfriendly.
Nigerians now find it almost impossible to feed.
To cap it the security situation in the country have gone from bad to worse with cases of kidnappings and killings being recorded on a daily basis.
It is so terrible that even Obas in the South West, the home of the president have become endangered species!
The president and the APC need to sit up and come up with quick solutions to the plethora of problems beseiging the country.
Things are terribly bad and the earlier those in Government realize this bitter truth, the better.
Baba Gba ope wa
