“The thing about Christmas is that it almost doesn’t matter what mood you’re in or what kind of a year you’ve had – it’s a fresh start.” – Kelly Clarkson
In three days, Christendom will celebrate Christmas to mark the birth of Jesus Christ, the Emmanuel, and God’s striking way to show humanity that he is ever with us. Nigeria will not be left out, especially with her sizable Christian population.
This year’s Christmas is unique, being the eighth and Nigeria’s last Christmas under the suzerainty of Muhammadu Buhari. We are making it an issue because this administration came to power eight years ago, making Christmas a political campaign.
On the Christmas Eve of 2015, Political Musings dwelt on President Buhari who was just seven months in office as elected President. With “Buhari’s First Christmas,” our interest in discussing Christmas derived from the yuletide message of Alhaji Lai Mohammed as the then-spokesperson of the APC, then in opposition. He had addressed Nigerians at Christmas 2014, the peak of electioneering just as we are now. With him then propaganda was the order of the day.
Lai Mohammed, now Information minister, had said then in an APC message, ”Many cannot travel home due to fears of kidnapping, ethno-religious crisis and insurgency, depending on which part of the country they are from. Many cannot celebrate due to the effects of the economic downturn, as manifested in the weakening Naira and falling oil prices, both exacerbated by widespread corruption.”
In the party’s statement entitled “This is your last Christmas in bondage,” APC assured Nigerians in 2014 while hoping to come to power that this would be their last Christmas celebration under the bondage of insecurity, corruption, unemployment, widespread hopelessness, and poor leadership. It further assured that there was hope on the horizon for the millions of Nigerians who could not celebrate Christmas that year due to the prevailing gloom across the land.
”Many will mark the holidays in darkness as the country’s public power supply seems to have fallen in direct proportion to the huge funds ostensibly pumped into the sector in the past few years. Many will be stuck on roads that have become clogged due to their poor state.”
Mohammed ended the assurances with a huge promise that an APC government would begin to positively impact the citizenry within its first few months at the helm, to such an extent that Nigerians would have a better Christmas celebration in 2015. With such relishing words that raised the anxiety of not a few and which persuaded Nigerians into voting them into office, we were tempted to look at his first Christmas even though he was barely seven months on the throne.
We wanted to know if the situation then in any way met the aspirations of Nigerians who had given them a mandate based on the savouring campaign messages. Upon the promise of changing things for a better Christmas in a few months, it took the government over six months to name a cabinet team, the first indication that it was not going to be as easy as they made us believe during the campaigns.
In 2015 and even now, the same Lai Mohammed is still holding the microphone as not only the megaphone of the party but also of the federal government as a minister. Realising in 2015 that none of his loud-mouthed promises could be met, he changed the narration, blaming former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration for the devastation of the country. By this year’s Christmas and without fear of contradiction, none of APC’s eight Christmases, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 can be compared to the last Christmas of the Jonathan era.
In December 2014 when Jonathan celebrated his last Christmas the national currency exchanged for less than N200 for an American dollar but within seven months of the regime during the first Christmas in 2015, it was exchanged for ₦280 a dollar. By the last Christmas of Buhari this Sunday, the exchange rate is between ₦750/800 to the dollar.
If all that was said by APC while in opposition in 2014 Christmas were to be said today, eight years after, there would be no need for alteration. Needless to say, there is still banditry and the gunmen menace as additions to inherited crimes and criminalities. Not to talk of a visibly divided and polarised nation.
No department of governance is not in a negative situation in the last eight years. Education has a sorry story, ditto health, security, unemployment, and the economy. The petrol subsidy, despite all the noise, is still a conduit pipe…widening from billions to trillions of petrodollars. Crude oil theft reaching frightening heights has tipped the scales.
In Buhari’s last Christmas Nigerians will have enough sour stories to tell how the regime has successfully impoverished more than 133 million Nigerians [despite the promise to lift 100 million out of poverty]. How corruption reached such a level that the custodian of the state coffers, the Accountant-General of the Federation, had to join in the theft of unimaginable proportions.
In this last Christmas of Buhari, the only silver lining is the electioneering that gives hope for the new Nigeria of our dreams. Credit goes to the Buhari administration for doing so badly that the docile, compliant, and credulous Nigerian youths are now stirred from their slumber, ready to take back their country. When Nigeria is rescued and restored possibly through the 2023 polls, history will give President Buhari a good place for making it possible.
The EndSARS nationwide protests of October 2020 and its brutal nipping by the security operatives paved the way for the apparent waking up of Nigerian youths. If by February 25, 2023, Nigerian youths decide to make a bold statement by influencing the presidential election, President Buhari would be eulogised for laying the foundation through his inert administration that provoked every gullible soul to stand up to be counted.
But despite the hardship of the eight Christmases under Buhari, the festivity always carries on, refusing to be distracted, showing exactly that it is coming down to earth of God’s son for our salvation. Philip Brooks, an American clergyman, and author succinctly captured the mood of Christmas when he wrote, “The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air when the song of angels is sung.”
Let us, therefore, in the mood of Christmas not forget the reason for the season which is time to shower love on one another by following the advice of this American famous internet radio commentator and motivational speaker, Steve Maraboli: “Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.” Merry Christmas, Nigerians.