No, I didn’t get Romans 9:12-16 wrong as the headline may suggest though both the scripture and today’s message are intertwined. 2024, ending in about 72 hours of reading this, has been an extraordinary year for the eight-billion-strong humanity, nations and the universe itself. Weathers even defied precedents and antecedents, becoming predictably unpredictable. Environmentalists would put this down to global warming for which they have literally in the wilderness, hoarsely preaching green and protection for nature, leading a country like France to host the Olympics without air-conditioners at the Games Village to huge discomfort for the athletes including global superstars who had to share cardboard beds in suffocating rooms because France is trying teaching to the rest of the world how to go-green, though there are no indications that Elysees presidential palace where Emmanuel Macron and family live, has stopped running on air-conditioners, though geothermal energy was introduced in 2023. What about the stunning turnaround of Joe Biden on the pardon for his only surviving son Hunter for his decade-long criminal enterprise and indictment despite repeated vow not to undermine his own justice department by so doing. So much for hypocrisy at the highest level of governance around the world.
To the credit of the Tinubu administration, it would appear that it is beginning to shed the cloak of hypocrisy of spending big on personal luxury for its front-row participants, from the Big man himself, to Madam, the Second Calabash among others, and preaching to the people, to live it as it comes and in the outgoing year, it has mostly been trickling, not twinkling despite the fickle, with very little to tickle. The expiring year tasks the existence of millions and still tasking their rational ability to keep going. Yet many, not expected to survive, are lasting the race to December 31 and even aspiring towards January 1, 2025. Such is the power of hope; that things would be better and not bitterer; the same hope that was hung unto around this time last year {2023}, wishing feverishly that 2024 would birth at least a grin, if not a smile. But Nigerians haven’t obviously been smiling but hope keeps ‘em going.
I know many who have been asking “how”, wondering how they pulled through an unquestionably tough 2024. That is where the scripture in the opening line comes in, because there were some not really bitten by the hard times but who bit the dust (can’t but remember the Wigwes and Capital Oil Uba here) in the course of the year, while families that feed on less than 3 dollars a day, on daily basis, are still waxing, maybe not strongly, but alive and strangely well.
The general rendition of the encouragement line about life and being hopeful is “when there is life there is hope”. Solomon {I love seeking his wise counsel} in his stylistic manner renders it in Ecclesiastes thus “a living dog is better than a dead lion”. That is talking about how precious being alive should worth with all mortal. But many more are now finding it extremely difficult to be thankfully, especially in Third World countries; to appreciate being alive as they are overwhelmed by the miasma of the current economic vicissitudes and the reality of their shrinking existence.
But we must still be thankful. No man will ever be enough to solve the problems of fellow man. That is why the best medical practitioners have never been able to solve the death riddle for those with enough cash, to pay for it. Those who attempted, like Michael Jackson, to live forever, died dramatically and even lived shorter life than those not doing so much extra, or even the needful basic, to stay alive. There are mad men who live basically on nothing and have survived for decades. Billionaires had checked themselves into hospitals to come out as bodies.
Life is a riddle and only those who understand it by way of deep insight and grace, will likely be genuinely thankful when crossing to the new year in about three days because believe it or not, 2025 may present challenges, not necessarily economic, that would make many grumbling now, to look back with nostalgia and say “we were not eating much last year but we didn’t have so and so problem like now”. God wants men to be thankful in all situations {see Philippians 4;4}. Nobody wants a better yesterday but governance has proven to be a rearview nostalgia for Nigerians, though somehow, we are yet to be missing the immediate president, General Muhammadu Buhari. But even the incumbent, considered to be one of the harshest the electoral system has gifted Nigerians, would still be missed if he leaves today, if not for his biting policies, at least maybe for his unmistaken charisma and queer humour. At least, he is seen governing, even if the result is minimal, unlike the silent-night administration before him.
There are times I would reflect on the phase Nigeria is now and would conclude maybe it is God’s way of genuinely drawing us closer to Him like He did with the Negroes in America in their “slavery” seasons. I marvel now seeing leading Coloiured championing dreadful stuff like LGBTQ, practically challenging the God that raised them to the current status, to a duel. It was by God’s Will that man came to be. Man didn’t create himself. That is the end of argument for me about the existence of God. As long as man cannot explain his existence beyond the evolution theory, his existence surely depends on One far greater than him and the Creator can surely control the created and deal with His creation if deviating from purpose. As long as man cant determine whether he would wake up if he sleeps, it will be foolish to challenge the One who can make man fall asleep anytime, anyhow and not wake up forever on this side of the universe again!
The new year is another opportunity for humanity, and its Nigerian corner to draw closer in obedience to the One who wills everything because “it is not for him that runneth…”. Prosperous 2025 to all readers.
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