“He who knows not where the rain first began to beat him will never recognise the fire that dries his skin.”
This ancestral truth rings with haunting precision as we stand in the indigo twilight of 2026, still shivering from the damp chill of a promise aborted in its prime.
It has been 33 years since the firmament fractured on June 12, 1993, and the deluge of that original sin continues to saturate our national soul.
As Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola used to say with his characteristic, stuttering wit: “You cannot clap with one hand.” Yet, for three decades, Nigeria has attempted a one-handed applause, wondering why the sound of progress remains a hollow thud.
For Nigeria, the rain did not merely fall; it plummeted. On that Saturday morning in 1993, a rare serenity descended upon our fractured geography. From the salt-sprayed docks of Lagos to the dust-choked plains of Maiduguri, millions performed a revolutionary act of defiance: they trusted one another. As a young reporter walking the beat during those tectonic upheavals, I inhaled the raw, unvarnished beauty of that trust.
