With the tough task of presiding over the affairs of a nation of 180 to 200 million people (who knows the actual number these days anyway?), it's understandable that you cannot please every single person because that's the way of the world.
It doesn't help if you're a former military Head of State who divides opinion just as much as when the conversation is about whether pineapple and pizza are a match made in heaven or the birth of the culinary Anti-Christ.
That half of your countrymen and women don't agree with your politics can put you in some tricky spots.
So, if you, say, disappear for months and travel to London (for example) to treat some illness that even your village people don't know about, people who don't have your best interest at heart will say you're wasting the country's resources for personal gain. 
"Why not improve the hospitals at home?" they'd ask, expecting you to drag yourself out of your sick bed to address them in a national broadcast that they're only waiting to criticise even more savagely for Twitter clout anyway.
If you promptly send a condolence message to a foreign country that just suffered some terrible tragedy, as the caring person that you are, these same people will remind you that you haven't spoken about the even more terrible tragedies that happened in your backyard in Zamfara, or Benue, or Taraba, or Kaduna or Nasarawa or, you know, pretty much anywhere within your own borders.
Whatever you do - whether it's making a terrible joke about a tragedy; retaining a soft spot for dictators that bled the country dry; or casually molesting the constitution - there are always going to be people who'll mess with your game.
So how do you solve a problem like this when you're unfairly targeted for criticism by people who don't know any better?
If you're Muhammadu Buhari, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, and Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (GCFR), you set the bloody rules of engagement.
Since Buhari was first elected democratic president in 2015 after a successful makeover as a "reformed democrat", he's unwittingly opened himself up to a new world of scrutiny that didn't exist in the 80s when he strutted around the presidential palace in his military garb.
In the nearly four years that he's led a confounding government, he's had to deal with all sorts of criticism while also trying to steer a nation that's clearly an overgrown baby.
To enable him focus on his job, the president surrounds himself with media aides, traditionally praise singers, who are burdened with the mundane task of fighting criticisms lobbed at the ivory tower that is Aso Rock and the man sitting atop it.
At a very important meeting that presidency sauces assure me was a real thing, the president's praise singers knocked heads together and came up with an official policy for fighting criticism of Buhari, the anti-corruption czar who eats integrity that's enough for two people (and a partridge in a pear tree).
"A lion does not concern himself with the opinion of sheep" was the groundbreaking position adopted after the meeting, according to the minutes of the meeting that might or might not exist.
With Mr Prez established to be the lion in this narrative, because duh, who are the sheep? Does a middle ground exist in this universe that accommodates third parties like dogs and squirrels and elephants? Does the lion concern himself with their opinion? Are there other lions that could change his mind?
Who gets the proper right to criticise a 76-year-old president who's dedicated the entirety of his life to the service of a nation that doesn't quite understand how to show appreciation?
Is it the millennial who's clout-chasing on the internet and testing the limits to which the Nigerian freedom of speech works by demanding that the president pays more attention to faltering education standards in the country? No. He's probably been paid by the opposition. Let's call him a Wailing Wailer.
Is it the 53-year-old who lost his company after the president was inaugurated and has been struggling with the economy's slow growth? No. His company was probably one of those used to bleed Nigeria dry by those other corrupt guys in the opposition.
Is it the 30-year-old who's mad at the president that she hasn't been able to get a job for years with unemployment figures rising drastically over the past four years? Ding. Ding. Ding! Noooooo. Doesn't she know that farming is all the rave these days? Can she not join her mates on the farm just because she wasted two presidential terms studying to become a doctor?
Is it the internally-displaced widow, widower or orphaned children in Benue who have lost their families to violence that has consumed their communities for months with no proper end in sight that can criticise the president? No. Haven't they seen that the president has defeated Boko Haram (even though it has nothing to do with their own tragedies)?
Is it a former president who has a knack for writing open letters against his successors that don't bend to his boyish charms? Of course not, he just wants someone to control so that he can continue to rule by proxy.
The president's media team and his remote-controlled fleet of supporters have done a commendable job of wrapping him in wool by going after the people that go after him (gbas gbos gbas gbos), with a variety of reasons conjured for why the sheeple try to drag the man down.
There's enough evidence of their media stomping to configure a list of people who are unqualified to take a hack at the president.
With that established, who, then, in the garden can tap the president's chest and not get water-hosed by his band of media hench-people?
If the president's Personal Assistant on New Media, Bashir Ahmad, is to be taken at his words, it is those who are not complaining at all, which is much very convenient.
When Nollywood star, Omotola Ekeinde, took to Twitter this week to call the president out on the country's insecurity mess and economic struggles which she said made the country 'hellish', Ahmad finally revealed to the whole nation the only entity qualified to take a shot at the president (for the sake of this article, we shall call the entity Not-Sheep).
"Madam Omotola, those who are working for CLEAN money are not complaining and will never refer our dear country as 'hellish'," Ahmad replied.
As underwhelming a revelation as that is, it's a fitting end to the search for the entity that can look the General in the eye and not get mobbed with a list of their sins from that time they first littered the road as a three-year-old.
Only Nigerians who are working for and earning clean money can criticise President Buhari's administration without a reprimand from his troops of minders.
Not the millions of graduates that cannot find jobs. Not the estimated 91.5 million Nigerians who are living in extreme poverty. And definitely not the hundreds and thousands for whom accommodating insecurity has become a way of life.
To undermine Ekeinde's criticism of the economy under the president, Ahmad added that no fewer than 200 medium and small scale rice milling centres emerged in Kano between 2015 and 2018.
"For that, billions circulated among millions," he tweeted.
Ahmad's "Criticising Buhari 101" masterclass is enough for every Nigerian sheep to understand why they cannot criticise anything the president does and the lesson here is for everyone to find their level.
So, while Nigeria might be besieged by a stubborn terrorist insurgency and rise in banditry, become the poverty capital of the world while also featuring regularly in unflattering economic and social development reports, every Nigerian unqualified to touch the hem of the president's garment should console themselves with the thought that there's always rice at home.