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By Allison Abanum
There are songs that sing.
And there are songs that weep.
Celine Dion’s “If That’s What It Takes” doesn’t just play in the background it feels like a heartbeat. A trembling vow. A whispered promise uttered in the kind of silence that follows great pain.
And as the song flowed in today’s Nigeria, its spirit gripped me with a revelation:
This is not just a love ballad.
It is the emotional blueprint of the season Nigeria is walking through under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
When Celine Dion’s voice trembles with the declaration of standing firm, bending under pressure, refusing to shatter even as the world leans its full weight on fragile shoulders it becomes impossible not to see Nigeria inside those words.
A nation bruised.
A nation exhausted.
A nation crying into the night, hoping someone will finally hear.
And then, a leader steps forward, not with comfort, but with commitment the commitment of someone who knows healing is messy, painful, sacrificial.
Tinubu’s leadership in this moment echoes that same vow:
“I will absorb this storm.
I will take this pressure.
I will remain standing, even if standing costs me everything.
If that is what protects you.”
For over a decade, Nigeria’s cries have echoed through forests, highways, villages and cities.
The sound of gunfire replaced laughter.
The sound of mourning replaced music.
Fear became daily bread.
Children learned the geography of danger.
Mothers learned the sound of dread.
Farmers learned to plant with one eye on the horizon.
We became a nation stitched together by survival.
But Tinubu walked into this season not as a spectator but as someone willing to bear the weight of a country collapsing under the memory of its own trauma.
Recruiting new soldiers and police not as numbers, but as shields.
Pulling officers away from VIP escorts because a mother’s life is just as valuable as a politician’s.
Sending forest guards to reclaim the dark corners where terror once made a home.
Pushing state police reform out of endless debate and into the realm of action.
These are more than political steps.
They are the kind of sacrifices leaders make when they refuse to let a wounded country bleed alone.
They sound exactly like the emotional heart of Celine Dion’s anthem:
“I will carry you.
I will stretch until I’m trembling.
I will remain, even when I am tired.
If that is what love demands.”
But the emotional climax of this parallel the moment where the song’s spirit and the nation’s reality fuse into one is Tinubu’s decision to end open grazing nationwide.
For decades, open grazing was not just a practice.
It was a wound.
A wound that never healed.
It tore communities apart.
Fires were lit.
Lives were lost.
And every funeral became another verse in a sorrow that seemed endless.
No leader wanted to confront it.
No administration wanted to carry the political weight.
No presidency wanted to risk the backlash.
But this time, someone stepped into the pain and said:
“Enough.
This land has cried long enough.
We will choose peace even if choosing peace demands courage that almost breaks us.”
This is the emotional depth of Celine Dion’s masterpiece, the willingness to give until giving becomes sacrifice.
Because leadership in crisis is not strength.
It is surrender.
It is the quiet agony of choosing the harder road every single day.
Tinubu’s actions in this moment speak the language of the song:
Standing like a rock even when the storm keeps pounding.
Bending under pressure without losing form.
Holding the nation’s hand even when his own hands shake.
Giving and giving and giving not because he is invincible, but because Nigeria cannot afford for him to fall.
That is the heartbreak and the beauty of duty.
Nigeria is still in the night.
But for the first time in a long time, the night feels… different.
Not silent.
Not hopeless.
Not endless.
Because someone is fighting in the dark so the rest of us may eventually see light.
Someone is carrying the weight of a nation that is learning how to stand again.
Someone is listening to the heart of this country the same way Celine Dion listens to the heart she sings for:
With tenderness.
With resolve.
With a willingness to walk through fire if that’s what it takes.
And then came the infrastructure renaissance — not just isolated projects, but generational undertakings that signal a president thinking 30 years ahead. The ambitious 700-kilometre Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway, now under construction, is set to connect states, open up maritime corridors, and stimulate multibillion-dollar investments along the Atlantic coast. The Sokoto-Badagry Super Highway, linking the far North to the South-West, promises to become one of Africa’s greatest economic arteries. Rail revival is back on track. Power reforms are accelerating. Housing estates are rising nationwide. Ports are being modernised to attract global shipping giants. And, across the country, federal roads once abandoned have returned to life under Tinubu’s Renewed Hope infrastructure drive.
The night is still here.
But dawn is preparing its first breath.
And as the song whispers through its final emotion, this becomes the message:
A country trying to heal.
A leader refusing to let go.
A nation slowly lifting its head again.
Because sometimes saving a nation requires a promise whispered in the dark:
“I will stand.
I will hold.
I will give everything…
If that’s what it takes.”
•Allison Abanum writes from Orogun, Delta State
