“Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.” – Hamilton Wright Mabie
President Bola Tinubu represents various things to many in Nigeria and across the globe. To some, the president is hardship personified. To others, he represents extraordinary bravery, getting to the apex of power despite his warts and all. To many others, he represents a man who damns consequences and cares little about the people’s plight.
The first six months of a four-year tenure may be too early to judge a president’s administration. Alas! It’s a 48-month journey, did you say? Yes, but the footsteps of a masquerade speak volumes about its dancing skill. So it is in other spheres of life. Like dancing, like governance/political administration.
The APC created an evil template to measure successive governments by Christmastime. In 2015, during the journey from opposition to the Aso Rock Villa, the party’s chief propagandist at the time, Lai Mohammed, summed up the state of affairs at Christmas under Goodluck Jonathan of the then-ruling PDP. His was a view bought by many then and sounded convincing for some voters to turn their back on the PDP a few months later.
Mohammed said, ”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 weakening the ₦aira and falling oil prices, both exacerbated by widespread corruption.”
In his message, Mohammed said that year’s Christmas was going to be their last in bondage. But 2016 brought APC’s first Christmas. In this column, with the same Mohammed speaking for the government, reminded him as follows: iThis was among the many sweet messages that APC took to the electorate upon which it was able to sway the March 28, 2015, presidential votes in its favour ahead of the then-ruling PDP.
This column recalled Mohammed’s and APC’s assurance that the 2015 Christmas was going to be the last one of hardship. “Tomorrow will be the first Christmas under the absolute watch of President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC federal Government and seven months in the saddle. I intend to leave readers to assess the situation themselves and see if this year’s (2015) Christmas has been able to measure up in any way to the boast of APC….”
In 2015, Lai Mohammed was still holding the microphone as the Information Minister and official spokesman of the Federal Government. So it was not unexpected that he was going to come up with another reassuring message but this time he was most likely going to still blame the not-so-rosy season on those he had blamed, former President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP whose mess is taking time to clear.
“He is not going to in any way acknowledge that both APC and then President Muhammdu Buhari appear confused on how to tackle the myriad of socio-political and economic problems…
“If the national currency exchanged for less than 200 for an American dollar last Christmas (2014) and goes up as high as ₦280/$ today seven months after APC took control, it is not unlikely that GEJ and PDP should be held responsible for the historic free fall of our currency.
“If Jonathan’s government was almost brought down with massive protests engineered by APC members when that government attempted to remove the subsidy on the eve of 2015 Christmas, APC eggheads assembled in Kaduna urging President Buhari to remove fuel subsidy. Even the fuel queue that was virtually nonexistent under Jonathan’s administration has visibly resurrected again.”
After eight years in charge in Buhari’s last Christmas in 2022, Nigerians had enough sour stories to tell how the regime successfully impoverished more than 133 million Nigerians [despite the promise to lift 100 million out of poverty]. Under their watch, corruption reached such a crescendo that the custodian of the state coffers, the Accountant-General of the Federation, had to join in the theft of unimaginable proportions.
I have taken you back into the past for us to appreciate the extent we have gone to rack and ruin under the APC administration. And it’s also against these backdrops that we arrive at 2023 Christmas, six months into Tinubu’s four-year questionable mandate and nine years of APC.
Luckily for both APC and Tinubu, there were not many fake promises while canvassing for votes, Tinubu merely said he would continue the good work of President Buhari. That he is successfully fulfilling! Buhari left the country divided along ethnic lines, and he has improved on it. Buhari showed much dislike for Ndigbo and called them a dot in a circle. Tinubu has not discarded that template. Only five Igbo in a nearly 50-member Federal Executive Council. Buhari’s nepotism was glaring, Tinubu improved on it to make it obvious and legendary. Buhari left the petrol price at ₦197/liter, and Tinubu jacked it up to ₦650/litre, Buhari’s lopsided appointments were disgusting but Tinubu’s own aroused revulsion and loathing. Buhari left one dollar to about ₦500; now it’s at ₦1,230/$. Buhari pretended to be fighting corruption, Tinubu is not a pretender, nobody is corrupt, as every file of corrupt persons is sent to the Attorney-General’s Office for safekeeping, especially for those joining APC with their smelly cupboards of skeletons. With Buhari, insurgence was growing tremendously spreading from the North East to other parts of the country in a baptized name as bandits, herdsmen, gunmen, and such other names, depending on the locations. With Tinubu, nothing has changed. With Buhari multidimensional poverty increased
and multiplied, the picture is worse with Tinubu. Under Buhari, inflation grew from 23 percent to over 28 percent. These are the gloomy pictures as Christendom celebrates 2023 Christmas in five days.
But can anything or anybody stop the celebration of Christmas? If Buhari and COVID-19 could not stop Christmas, is it Bola Tinubu who can? Certainly not. American songwriter, Kelly Clarkson, tells us: “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.”
This huge festival that started some two millennia ago, uninterrupted even by wars, was made possible through the obedience of a Jewish couple, Mary and Joseph, to God, to use them as vessels to birth the long-awaited saviour of mankind. The power of Christmas as the season for joy, peace, and love can be measured by what transpired during World War I: “On December 7, 1914…Pope Benedict XV proposed a temporary ceasefire for the celebration of Christmas. The warring countries refused, but on Christmas Day the soldiers at the theatre of war right in the trenches on their own declared their unofficial truce. It’s called the First World War Christmas truce.
When angel Gabriel announced the birth of this unique man, he told Mary that for God nothing is impossible, meaning that anything positive can come along with Christ. But we as human beings must dispose ourselves wholly of it. Christmas provides us with such ample opportunity.
Christmas is a hope booster, it re-engineers aspirations for salvation. Drawing from that, Nigerians who survived eight years of convoluted and horrifying Christmas under Buhari see this year as worse but are not despairing and forlorn, knowing what the season means and what it brings.
Therefore, despite Tinubu being a huge burden on us this Christmas, may we never lose sight of the reason for this season, time to open our hearts to each other and deliver undiluted love to mankind.
Christmas isn’t just a day’s feast but a frame of mind that lingers with us. Let’s therefore show and share love among ourselves. I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a bountiful year ahead. God bless Nigeria.