GOODROCK! That is how Nigerians who have problems managing the letter “l” would pronounce your first name. And I strongly suspect they hold the clue to the attributes you require to succeed as President of the Giant of Africa. Reason: Thus far, good luck could carry you, but no further.

In line with popular prediction, you ultimately rode on the back of your sterling attributes of goodness, humility and likeable nature enveloped in your legendary aura of good luck to land the nation’s number one job… Even before the April 16 presidential election, popular sentiments on certain ‘divine,’ emotional and socio-political factors had already given it to you. But the considerations for which Nigerians voted for you were exactly the same reasons why citizens of sophisticated democracies would probably not have aligned on your side.

A good number of Nigerians might have confirmed you for Aso Rock because you were “God-ordained”. The Japanese might not have been so convinced. Millions of our people might have taken sides with you because you had the humility to go on your knees before a revered Pastor.

Britons might not have seen anything worthy of No.10 Downing Street in that. Most believers in “equity in the political equation of the country” here might have given it to you because of the geo-political zone you hail from. This might not have mattered to Americans in the competitive race to the White House.

Nigerians made a big sacrifice for you, though and, in the process, putting their future on the line. They did not vote for you because they had succumbed to your party’s tacit coercion disguised in the “shakara” to rule for 60 years in the first instance.

In fact, if Nigerians had their way, your party’s identity would be obliterated from memory and dumped into the ‘Recycle Bin’ of history on account of the lamentable retrogression it had visited on the country.

The state of every index of national development, including security, power supply, roads and other infrastructure, education, healthcare and job creation, is worse today than it was in 1999 when your party was zoned into power. The largest single Black nation on earth chose you in spite of the PDP not because of it and Neighbour2Neighbour.

Now, Nigerians wonder if you were prepared, Your Excellency, to reciprocate the sacrifice by, if need be, putting your very life on the line.

They wonder if you would be ready to effect a change of name like the Pope who, upon ordination at the Vatican, drops his natural names and takes on a papal appellation.

To ensure Nigerians do not ultimately have to bite their fingers at this landmark decision, you urgently require a near-wholesale transformation in qualities and attributes. The problems staring you and your citizens in the face at the moment can hardly be confronted, let alone vanquished, with humility and good luck. You require more of decisiveness and ruthlessness.

Hear Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919): “Do not get into a fight if you can possibly avoid it; if you get in, see it through… Don’t hit a man if it is honourably possible to avoid hitting, but if you do hit him, put him to sleep”.

The attributes required to effect the action in that line most probably endeared the 26th President of the United States to Americans a century and one decade ago. And you need such, for instance, to confront the canker tagged corruption which is the central trunk from which the myriad of calamities your party has visited on the country these past 12 years sprouted as branches.

You require therefore, Your Excellency, to transform from Goodluck to Goodrock. You need to be good but you must, at the same time, be as solid, immovable and impregnable as the Rock of Gibraltar. That is a very thorny and dangerous path to tread, but you must rise above the shenanigans of your PDP and not just step on powerful toes but actually crush them like a heavy rock.

I wish you an immensely successful tenure as you bear the burden of the Giant of Africa on your lucky, but more importantly, rocky shoulders. God bless Nigeria.

Mr. DELE AKINOLA, a commentator  on national issues,  wrote from Lagos.