The world over, everyone who has been around at least two, three decades would agree with me that things have really changed. For instance, no one talks like that anymore about new year resolutions. It used to be an every year-dawn fad. People fell over themselves not only to announce their resolutions for the year but also to read others’.
It didn’t matter at the end of that year how many remained true to their vows. The ritual continued the very next year, and the next, and the next until it seemed humanity got tired of the internecine deceit. Plus, life had become something else; more technical, much harder and -if you like- some sort of dramatic monotone. We all simply moved on seeing that everwhere we go, what shines is darkness; not light, and even worse that what doesn’t comprehend that shine is light, not darkness.
This is no pessimisation nor an attempt to pessimistigmatise life. This is the reality of life which we have come to live with. People of honour and excellence who sow hard work, honesty and loyalty for every day of 35 years only harvest regret, ingratitude and poverty. But mediocrities who garbage in sycophancy, connections and such other worldly sweet-nothings cash out big time, quick quick, with big positions, good money, assorted cars, beautiful mansions and allied good things of life.
That’s how darkness has been shining and light has not been understanding it. Our first- and second-class graduates are toing and froing employment centres in vain because their long-legged third-class mates had filled up the few vacancies. Our daughters who preferred studying to runs (whatever that means) and our sons who rejected cultism now spend long nights weeping seeing that their colleagues who chose otherwise are better off. Stop preaching to me, please.
Go and convince women who lived right as girls but a decade or two after, are either divorced or enduring a fruitless marriage while their friends who committed serial abortions are happily and fruitfully married to the best men. And, just in case, you can’t speak to this anomaly, perhaps the better option would be to use this new year window to seek ways of forcing darkness to stop shining. That’s it. Henceforth, let all Nigerians -all of us- swear to and live by a patriotic, non-partisan and unethnic resolution!
To do that though, we need first to understand the situation by carrying out an extensive appraisal of our journey hereto. No need to go back too far, let’s focus on the year that just went by since it was in every ramification the miniature of our chequered past. Without a doubt, 2020 was a cold-blooded year that came like a thief in the night. It stole, it destroyed, it killed -millions worldwide.
Alas, its dastardly shenanigans notwithstanding, that year also offered us so much to be thankful for. Covid-19 didn’t get Nigerians and others living in Africa falling and dying like flies, as was feared. Sadistic cynics even see the pandemic as a blessing in disguise for directly stopping our so-called big people from proceeding on medical tourism abroad which indirectly saw to an upgrade in our health infrastructure. And, within the year that came with so much promise but delivered so little, many golden opportunities were thrown up to fix Nigeria.
Sadly, we missed all of such opportunities. Today, our country is still as divided and stagnated -if not more. Today, our people are still as hypocritical and hateful -if not worse. We continue to allow ethnicity, religion and politics to colour how we see what the rest of the world know is our chronic shame.
Please, don’t think too hard. Take the open letter recently by the Catholic Bishop, Matthew Hassan Kukah, to President Muhammadu Buhari. Rather than seek to help the president address the bullets of thoughts raised by the reverend father, presidential handlers and others who erroneously think they own or love the president more have remade the bullets into ammunition and redirected them at the sender. It is this mentality that has kept Nigeria where it is.
To be sure, this entry is not a declaration for or against Bishop Kukah. Truth needs no seconder. Still, the point must be made that the president is not our problem. Apart from Aso Rock Villa, as a place not as a human being, the problem of Nigeria is Nigerians.
Why is it so impossible for someone to get in there and keep to own new year resolutions? Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, a great leader no matter how you look at him, got there in 1999 and only after he had left in 2007 did he start writing letters to the same place; conveying the very ideas he should have executed. Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua, God bless his soul, I’m sure died in office with many regrets about value he couldn’t add. What about Dr. Goodluck Jonathan?
Niger Deltans like me believe that he got too carried away and procrastinated too much. Which is why our region has nothing to show for his over five years as president. I hope he is now learning how to be president in a setting such as ours. By the way, let me confess that Dr. Jonathan’s wasted years is the reason I cannot and do not criticise what I call the naked regionality of this incumbent.
That indeed is the crux of the trouble with Nigeria. Its Citizens -all of us- are driven by our local government area or state mindset, feeling nothing and doing absolutely nothing for Nigeria, but who believe that the country should make progress. APC saw nothing good in a PDP presidency. An alarming majority of Muslims did or said everything to mess up the Christian presidency.
With the tables having turned, PDP and Christians now think it’s payback time. Those who planted this silly confusion are currently all over the place defending even the indefensible. And, others who seem to have been incurably blinded by the vengeful desperation for their pound of flesh, are attacking when they should partner in defence of country. For crying out loud, who on earth build a nation that way?
Clearly, this merry-go-round politics has always been an ill wind. Therefore, all Nigerians of good conscience, must seize the birth of another year as yet another chance to resolve to forgive and forget and to carry on differently -going forward. Furthermore, our collective new year resolutions should be to eschew the past and politics and religion of bitterness, vengeance and ethnicity. While wishing us all a smashing 2021, let’s stay reminded that the healing that Nigeria needs can only come from truth, justice, forgiveness, love, and unity.
God bless Nigeria!