Merry Christmas, Nigerians!

IT is that time, that specific great day, of the year again. Christmas, the festivity that marks the birth of the Lord Jesus, the Saviour of mankind, is here again, and Christians all over the world, along with non-Christians who love and celebrate them, are having a happy moment reminiscing on that glorious time in Bethlehem, Israel, when the man around whom today’s celebration is centred was born. In Nigeria, Christmas is synonymous with festivity; it is the time made memorable by Santa Claus (or, more correctly in the Nigerian context, Father Christmas) and the distribution of gifts. It is the season of colourful trees, lights and fireworks, and of course, jollof rice and chicken. It is the time marked by pleasant sounds and bright colours. Whatever the existential challenges that Nigerians face, they make it a point of duty to mark Christmas, and with it the New Year season, with fanfare. It is December, and a feeling of relaxation typically pervades the atmosphere.

If you have read the papers or listened to the news today, chances are that you are already loaded, if not satiated, with the homilies and good wishes of officialdom. Christmas, like other festivities, provides Nigerian leaders with a golden opportunity to harp on and canvass those virtues that make for great nationhood: compassion, sacrifice, unity, love of neighbour, etc. Naturally, the homilies are usually built around the personality of Christ, the man whom the Bible portrays as making the ultimate sacrifice for humanity by laying down His life. As we have often noted on this page, Jesus was not quite the kind of man that many Nigerian leaders tend to make Him to be, namely, a prophet who merely preached love. As a preacher, Jesus was at war with the religious principalities of His day who robbed the poor, widows and the fatherless and made merchandise of the Word of Life. He lived an extremely simple life that caused Him to cover incredible mileage on foot preaching the Good News, shunned ostentation and luxury, and condemned the criminals in palaces who used power as a tool of oppression. He healed the sick and the infirm, charging not a penny, and went everywhere proclaiming that His purpose was to do the will of the Almighty God, not to reinforce the structures of carnality.

It is against this backdrop, then, that we urge Nigerian leaders to do much more than preach nice sermons at Christmas. They should make personal sacrifices so that Nigerians can live significantly better lives. They should aspire towards what the sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, called Life More Abundant. They should stop looting the treasury while pontificating like the Pharisees and Sadducees that Jesus battled to a standstill. As we said in a previous editorial, in 2019, The Economist magazine reported that Nigerian leaders had stolen an estimated $582bn since Independence in 1960. It quoted the UK’s International Corruption Unit as saying that it had confiscated £76 million from Nigeria since 2006, while another £791 million had been frozen worldwide following its work. That is certainly not Christ-like. It is disturbing news that Nigerian leaders allegedly diverted at least N1.1 trillion in the power sector alone since the return to civil rule in 1999 and laundered an estimated N1.3 trillion between 2015 and 2019. In 2015, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) indicated that Nigerian leaders stole $20 trillion from the treasury between 1960 and that year!  Well, the leaders who executed such a coup against the populace preached Christmas sermons while doing things that should ordinarily have earned them long jail terms.

Nigerians are battling economic hardship and insecurity, although it has to be admitted that, this December, there has been a slight decrease in the cost of foodstuff and fuel. It is distressing, nevertheless, that over 129 million Nigerians are living below the poverty line; that the cost of a basic food basket increased fivefold since 2019; that widespread insecurity has led to a surge in poverty, with 60 percent of Nigerians living in poverty; and that job losses led to N8.43bn in pension withdrawals in the third quarter of this outgoing year. Among other dismal statistics, Nigeria generates less than 5,000 megawatts of electricity for a population of over 220 million and continues to have a significant infrastructure gap. The good thing, though, is that the problems are surmountable: Nigerian leaders should just consider embracing the virtues that Christ espoused. Leadership is problem-solving.

As we suggested in previous editorials, Nigerian leaders can set Christmas-to-Christmas targets for themselves. They can itemise and pursue things they intend to actualise for the masses by the next Christmas season. In this regard, we hereby set a specific target for them: there must be functional, well-equipped state police formations across the country by this time next year. The country will be the better for it.

We wish our readers, their families and all Nigerians a most blessed Christmas full of joy and fun. May the next Christmas be better than this one.

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