Throwback Thursday throws back

There is something about Thursdays. I cannot explain it, and I have stopped trying. But the evidence is stubborn, like a “tinkiya” that refuses to get out of your way. I am 35 years old, and my life’s most vivid memories are stamped with that peculiar weekday—neither the frantic rush of Monday nor the sweet […]

There is something about Thursdays. I cannot explain it, and I have stopped trying. But the evidence is stubborn, like a “tinkiya” that refuses to get out of your way. I am 35 years old, and my life’s most vivid memories are stamped with that peculiar weekday—neither the frantic rush of Monday nor the sweet relief of a TGI Friday, but a strange hinge upon which doors swing open or slam shut. Throwback Thursday, they call it on social media. But for me, a Thursday throws back whether I ask it to or not.

My earliest memory: 1993. I was three years old, a tiny thing in Zone 6, Abuja. My father sat on the balcony with my mother, telling her to get us ready. “Tomorrow is Friday,” he said. “I will come home before Juma’a, and we will go to the mosque together with the children.” I remember that it was a Thursday because he was planning for the next day. The school was FOMWAN in Area 1, which had its own Juma’a mosque. After prayers, we would go to the headmaster’s office for our books and uniforms. A fresh start. My first day of school—or rather, the eve of it—was a Thursday. And that pattern never broke.

Three of my younger siblings, including our last born—my beloved princess—were both born on Thursdays. I remember those Thursdays too: the waiting room, the green tea from a thermos, my father’s best friend vigorously taking charge of the situation because my father was far away in Enugu that Thursday on an official trip, and then the moment a nurse emerged, with a distinct sound of a baby crying its lungs off on her heels. Fresh starts, again. My last day as a secondary school student was a Thursday—July 2007, when I walked out of that NECO hall knowing I would never have to parse through Aminata Sowfall’s “The Beggar’s Strike” under fluorescent lights again. I met my wife on a Thursday. I earned my first one million naira on a Thursday. I lost my maternal grandfather on a Thursday—the only kind of Thursday that gives no fresh start, only a door closing. And I received my appointment letter as the private sector representative on the Kano Project Coordination Unit of the World Bank IDEAS project, covering seven states in North Western Nigeria. That, too, was a Thursday.

Now, being objective, I know that Thursdays are statistically no more special than any other day. But anecdotally? Kai, anecdotally, Thursdays have been the stage for the most consequential acts of Nigeria’s long, bewildering drama.

Consider the very beginning. On January 1, 1914—a Thursday—Lord Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern Nigeria Protectorates. A fresh start, they called it. What we got was a forced marriage between peoples who had barely been introduced. That Thursday threw back then, and it is still throwing back today. Every ethnic crisis, every north-south suspicion, every argument over resource control—it all traces its ancestry to that Thursday. Karamba! Ko Karambani dai?

Then came another Thursday, January 15, 1970. The Biafran war ended. A fresh start, we hoped. Three million dead and the survivors were told to hug themselves and move on. That Thursday, General Gowon stood before the world and said, “No victor, no vanquished.” Beautiful words. But the structural wounds never healed. And the children of that war—the abandoned, the orphaned, and the traumatised—became the street children looming over our heads like a thousand Swords of Damocles.  Thursday throws back again.

Globally, Thursdays have been no less dramatic. On November 9, 1989—a Thursday—the Berlin Wall fell. A fresh start for Europe, for the idea of unity. The world celebrated. And somewhere in Kano, a young Almajiri was singing the “Babiya Allah”, begging for his breakfast, unaware that history had just turned a page he would never get to read. On October 14, 1962—a Thursday—the Cuban Missile Crisis began. The world held its breath. Thirteen days of nuclear terror. That Thursday, humanity looked into the abyss and blinked. We are still blinking.

Which brings me to now. Today, as I write this, the world is on another Thursday edge. The cold war between the US-Israel axis and Iran has flared again. The Strait of Hormuz is blockaded. US warships are turning back tankers. Iran’s proxies—Hezbollah, the Houthis, the PMF—are sharpening their rhetoric. Pakistan’s peace talks have stalled. And the Global South, including our own Nigeria, is watching nervously because when oil prices spike, our naira collapses faster than Goggo Wakkala’s mud hut under a downpour.

Domestically, the fog is even thicker. The 2027 elections loom like the Titanic sailing toward an iceberg we can see but cannot avoid. The political class is already defecting, forming alliances, and emptying state treasuries into campaign war chests. The youth are angry. The economy is gasping. And every Thursday, it seems, brings a new headline that makes the previous Thursday’s news seem quaint.

But here is what I have learned from a lifetime of Thursdays. Fresh starts do not come wrapped in ribbons. They come as choices. When my father took us to FOMWAN the day that followed that Thursday in 1993, he was choosing to invest in our future. When I met my wife on a Thursday, I chose to say hello. When I received that World Bank appointment letter, I chose to say yes. And when Nigeria faces this current turmoil—the Middle East burning, the 2027 election threatening to tear what is left of our social fabric—we have a choice. Despair or throwback to the Thursdays that taught us we can begin again.

The Hausa elders say, “Ranar Alhamis, ranar cika alkawari”—Thursday is the day of fulfilling promises. So here is my promise. I will not japa. I will not join the choir of those who sing Babiya Allahs about Nigeria’s hopelessness at foreign embassies. Because a Thursday throws back, yes. But it also throws forward. And the only direction worth throwing is toward a future we build ourselves—with or without the rest of the world.

Sai Alhamis. The midpoint between Wednesdays and Fridays. Hausa elders also say that “Juma’a mai kyau daga Laraba ake ganeta”: a good Friday will be visible from Wednesday. Today is Thursday, so we have already seen what the Friday on the horizon has in store for us yesterday. So today, we consolidate. We capitalise. Or at least mitigate. Personally, I must confess that I have seen nothing. But I am sure the elders have. While seated, they can see what I cannot see from atop a tower.

But maybe I will start trying again. Sai Alhamis. And then another Thursday after that.