There are three seasons in the Church’s calendar year that have deep impact on me. They are Christmas, Easter, and Lent. These three seasons touch on my spiritual life in a very special way. While some see the Christmas period as a time for merry-making and enjoyment, I see it as one for sober reflection. This is why I have never, in all the 49 years plus of my earthly life, celebrated Christmas with fanfare. Rather I always choose to stay indoors and mark the day with my family. A few friends that visit me on Christmas Day do so not particularly to come and wine and dine with me but to share in the solitude the day offers. They come purely as part of my daily routine to discuss personal matters.

Like John the Baptist, I have never seen myself qualified enough to call upon the mighty and precious name of Jesus, let alone stand before His holy presence. I am a sinner striving to become a saint. This makes me unworthy before Him. But my faith in the resurrection has increased my courage to do his work in the most unusual way possible. Just as Saint Paul encourages us to persevere, so do I encourage every Nigerian not to allow Nigeria die. The woes besetting our nation are so daunting that we need to work cooperatively to save it. The people are hungry, sick, ignorant and defenceless. They cry out for help daily but relief is not in sight.
They look up to our leaders, many of who had lived above 70 years and still control the destiny and resources of this great nation, for salvation. But the more they strive, the lesser they get.  

The future of Nigeria does not belong to the outgoing generation, but to my own generation. Who else can salvage our nation if not you and me? I am 49 years old and will be 50 next year. This makes all of us above the age of 40 inheritors of the new Nigeria. We are custodians of the future of Nigeria. As much as I have deep respect for our elders, I regret to state that many of them have not lived up to expectation. Nigeria is where it is today because some of these elders failed to discharge their duties to the nation patriotically. It is painful that our politicians mix patriotism with politics. Patriotism transcends pettiness and clannishness. It is rather a resolve by one to place the nation’s interest above one’s parochial and ethnocentric interests.

The founders of the Nigerian nation offered their lives as a sacrifice to earn our independence. They were not intimidated by the firepower of the colonialists who did everything humanly possible to muzzle them to drop their agitation for independence. Contrary to the expectations of the white men and their sponsors, these selfless Nigerians fought unrelentingly until success was achieved. They had vision, and pursued the same with unwavering commitment. This is the kind of spirit today’s Nigerian leaders lack.

What rule our lives today are greed, lasciviousness, licentiousness, revelry, ostentation and ethnicity. We no longer think as one, united people bound in love and faith with a common vision to assert our sovereignty in the comity of nations. I still cherish the altruistic lifestyles of Zik and his co-compatriots who risked everything to make us live. They are since gone, but their legacies remain as a testimony of their noble accomplishments.

I wish to ask a salient question: Why does evil thrive more during the season of Christmas? The answer is very clear. It is because we do not appreciate the essence of Christmas. Christmas should be a period for self-reexamination, charity and righteousness. It is not a time to engage in sexual orgies, wild parties, drunkenness, criminality, and other forms of misadventure that will leave us in pain and diminish the presence of God in our lives. It will do us a world of good if we can shun these evils and in their place embrace Christ. The presence of Christ in our lives defeats the desire for sin and draws us closer to God.

By next year, the nation will begin preparations for another set of elections. Already, some of our politicians are amassing arsenal to harm or intimidate people. Politics should not be a do-or-die affair. Rather it should be taken for what it is: service to the people. Those who work at cross-purpose with the vision of the Nigerian state are the people’s enemies. They should repent of their sins this season and embrace righteousness. Righteousness exalts a nation while sin is a reproach.

The tragedy of our national life is the absence of God in our lives. It is this absence that is responsible for the emergence of leaders who neither fear God nor respect man. They see themselves as leaders and yet carry themselves with too much air around them. What is in life that man should gain everything in it and suffer the loss of his soul?
Have we ever spared a thought about what will happen between now and the New Year?  Certainly, not everybody will make it into 2010. Those who will make it into the New Year do not know either do those that will die. It is this uncertainty that makes life a bit of a mystery. Is it not then foolhardy for anybody to arrogate anything to himself? The life we live is not ours - it is a gift from God.

The best way to appreciate the vanity of life is to look at the dead. These people were once men and women of substance, who treaded this world as colossuses. See where they are now: in the cold bowels of the earth. The only hope we have is not in our earthly possessions but in the hope that those who died in Christ will rise up with Him on the day of resurrection. It is for this reason we should pursue only those things that will edify and make us righteous.

I believe, by His grace, that very soon, in another 10 years, I will join the league of elder statesmen. This is why I am working very hard to round off all that I am destined to accomplish in the next 22-25 years during which time I will retire respectfully and with dignity. I do not belong to the school of thought that believes that one should keep working until one dies. There is time for everything under the sun.        
 
Nigeria is going backwards while evil is growing in leaps and bounds because of the lackadaisical attitude of Nigerians to Nigeria. We treat Nigeria with disdain and indifference because we pay lip-service to nationalism. Many of us claim to be patriotic but can hardly stand up to be counted when the chips are down. Look at the pillaging and rip-off that go on daily in Nigeria. We read all kinds of heart-rending stories in the media about the ills in our society, but little is done to stem them. Those charged with running the affairs of the country find it difficult to discharge their duties courageously and truthfully.

They are afraid to apply the rules as they play the game of politics. They pander to the whims of the high and mighty while jettisoning the interest of the masses that elected them into office. When we cast our minds back to the long list of promises they made as they sought our votes and the lethargic way they shove us all aside when it mattered most we do nothing but cry. We cry for missed opportunities. We cry for the pall of darkness that has enveloped our nation and its future.

I do not like the way I am sounding because it cuts open my heart. I seldom sound this way and do so only when the cloud that is hovering over the nation becomes darker. I am worried by the endemic poverty that hunts down the innocent people whose only source of livelihood is peasant farming and petty trading. The rich are crying even in the abundance of their wealth. Then what becomes of many hapless and hopeless Nigerians who are not sure from where their next meal will come.
It will be suicidal to allow Nigeria to continue to drift into the cesspit of chaos and anarchy as is the case today. Violent crimes, corruption, and greed have held our nation and its people hostage.  Sadly every aspect of our national life is beset by one problem or another.

Despite this hopeless and critical development, I am still confident that very soon things will be better. There is no way we can go on like this without any hope of respite. God who made heaven and earth knows that Nigeria deserves redemption. This is why he has placed this yoke upon us in order to chastise us and draw us back to him.
It is becoming increasingly indubitable that only divine intervention can save Nigeria from its present predicament. It seems our leaders have lost their sense of reasoning and care no hoot about what becomes of the great nation called Nigeria. Social and moral values have been fed to the dogs while discipline has gone to the winds. Who will bell the cat then?

How can we allow Nigeria to die when we can collectively do something to salvage it? What we need do is to work as team, shun clannishness and embrace openness and honesty in all that we do. If we can in one accord resolve today to move Nigeria forward, so shall it be. Is it not a pity that the destiny of 150 million people has been hijacked and manipulated by a minority clique that has continued to lord it over us since independence. They have vowed never to see us grow out of the pitiful state in which we are all hauled together.

Today, they talk about deregulation, tomorrow they talk about mass failure in May/June WAEC/GCE, and another day the talk is shifted to a less important matter - all in an attempt to continue to hold us hostage. When shall we be free? The whole thing has become a cycle of one evil after another.
There is no better time to collectively meditate on Nigeria than this season of Christmas. We must recollect our past and decide thereafter which way to go in the effort to redeem Nigeria. It will do nobody any good to see Nigeria slide into irredeemable crisis that has the capacity of incinerating its future and sovereignty. We do not have any other country other than Nigeria. We must, therefore, stand up and protect it.

We should not forget that life is transient and somebody you see today, you may not see tomorrow. We are all witnesses to the harvest of sudden deaths that has hit the nation of recent. We read fearful and incredible stories in the media daily about people dying suddenly. What impact do they have on us? Are we so insensitive as to downplay the inherent message of these happenstances? They are all signs of the times and a clear inference of what is to come.

We should not enter the New Year without making amends and returning to righteous ways. The forthcoming Christmas may be the last for some of us. But because of the uncertainty of life, nobody knows those that will go. But the undeniable truth is that many had gone. Where are Zik, Awo, Ahmadu Bello, and a host of other nationalists? They have all gone. And we too will join them when our own time comes. But for what shall we be remembered? As people who destroyed our collective heritage? God forbid!

There is still time to make amends and take our nation to its God-given height. I know for sure that Nigeria will get over its current crisis and regain its lost glory very soon. The first step to achieving this noble goal is to resolve in ourselves today to work for the unity, progress and security of Nigeria. Just a little push will take the nation into the comity of one of the globally leading nations.

Those who want to destroy Nigeria should know that we have no other nation to call ours except Nigeria. If we protect Nigeria today then we will indirectly be creating a future for them tomorrow.
All the ominous signs hanging over our nation today, I pray in the mighty name of Most High God, will soon disappear and prosperity will reign supreme.
Our God is truly a covenant-keeping God and he will never allow his people to suffer unduly.