It is Sallah day after subh, and I cannot take the usual 2-hour nap before morning rush.

Not because of the rooster, not because of the children already racing around in their new clothes, and not because of the smell of all the cooking drifting from the kitchen.

No, I cannot sleep because I am that same giddy child from 30 years ago, the one who did dress rehearsals on Sallah eves, wearing my cap with angles, practicing his most respectful greeting for the elders.

As always, I spend my “Big Sallahs” amongst my extended family in Kebbi… and visiting and greeting elders has also always been a big part of the experience.

Yes, the one who believed that Sallah morning was proof that the universe could, on occasion, arrange itself into something close to a conspiracy.

Yesterday was that Sallah.

But not the small one.

Not the one that comes and goes with borrowed happiness.

I am talking about the biggest Sallah of our lifetime.

And I am not talking about the moon sighting.

I am talking about the future.

Now, before you roll your eyes and mutter “another dreamer,” let me confess something.

I am monotonous like that on special occasions.

Boringly, predictably, embarrassingly monotonous.

Everything I see, everything I hear, every catastrophe and every flicker of hope—it all hearkens back to the same ideal.

The same dream.

That Africa, our Africa, will rise.

Not because of magic.

Not because of foreign aid.

Not because the rest will suddenly develop a conscience.

But because we will unconsciously finally decide that we have had enough of being spectators in our own story.

I know how tiresome that sounds.

I know that after the hundredth time, even my friends want to change the subject.

But I am prepared to die on this hill.

So let them change the subject.

I will stay here, waving my flag, slightly delirious from the sun.

Look around you.

Darkness is everywhere.

The Middle East is on fire—Iran and Israel trading blows while the rest of the world pretends to be shocked.

The Strait of Hormuz is blockaded.

And then reblockaded.

Global oil prices are singing acrobatics.

And here in Nigeria, the naira is gasping for air like a fish on hot pavement.

The 2027 election looms like a storm cloud that refuses to break.

Everyone is anxious.

Everyone is planning their escape route.

Japa has become a verb, a noun, and a prayer.

But me? I am rejoicing.

Not because I am foolish.

Not because I do not see the blood and the tears.

But because the Chinese Daoist philosophers got it right: you should rejoice when you lose and be afraid when you win.

At the bottom, there is nowhere to go but up.

And Africa, my friends, has been at the bottom for so long that our necks hurt from looking down.

Recently, I went through something that cracked me open.

A personal difficulty that....