When the year ends – Dr. Muiz Banire

Compliments of the season to all our readers wherever you are located. This is a season of twin celebrations of both Christmas and a new year. It is a season when all are expected to celebrate, be joyous, full of merriment and make new resolutions with respect to the new year. It is also supposed to be a season of self-examination and introspection. Self-examination and introspection from three different angles: God, government and one’s self. The trio above are intertwined as shall be seen in our analysis below. When a year winds down and goes into the eclipse of the past with a new future approaching, we need to celebrate the glory of God that has lasted with us till the moment and which gives us the hope of witnessing new ones. We need to be thankful for all the mercies we have received which are not by our own might but by the special grace of God. It is He that has given us life and health to be able to witness the season as many have gone without having the blessings of today.

Whatever they are confronting in the grave and in the presence of their Maker is only known to them. Definitely life does not end here as death is a journey of accountability. All scriptures preach it and even the Yoruba traditional divination religion of Ifa, in a pregnant lyric preaches about the day of reckoning. Or how do you assess the song that says e ma se’ka laye tori a n r’orun/bi e ba de ibode/e o ro’jo which literally means do not be wicked while on earth, when you get to the gate of heaven, you will give accounts? It is this perception that must be realized so that our relationship with our Maker is improved upon while the opportunity subsists. What are you doing that you know is not pleasant in the eyes of God? What is the relationship between you and your fellow humans? As you are in a position of authority, are you using it to serve God and man or you are just enveloping yourself in self-indulgence and corruption? Most government officials deserve nothing but the shooting range by the way they destroy people’s commonwealth through embezzlement and corruption.
Whereas these are the same set of people that will be in church today celebrating Jesus and thanking God for unmerited favours which they attribute to God but was earned through devilish and baleful greed. They are the holders of various Islamic titles with reserved spaces in the mosque. They are the chieftains of various traditional stools in hundreds of towns and villages with the people celebrating their ill-gotten wealth. These people keep on deceiving themselves believing they are deceiving God, the Perfect Being of Patience. We know that many politicians in our clime are irredeemable when it comes to corruption and the only way God can assist in dealing with them is to remove them like cancer is exorcised by a perfect surgeon. They are the ones who have denied the masses of all good roads always built in the budget as they have collected the contracts, registered the roads as having been constructed or rehabilitated whereas they same roads have long lost the memory of macadam tastes and have become mere death traps, or where executed, substandard.

These are the same politicians who have embezzled the money meant for healthcare service for which huge amounts of money are appropriated every year in the national and state budgets. These are the people who have rendered the youths hopeless by joblessness while using religious institutions to perpetuate the belief of the masses in miracles. And you see pastors preaching prosperity only through Jesus while their Islamic counterparts insist on youths engaging in unceasing prayers and other nefarious practices to become rich. That is why ritual killings have become the main orientation of our youths as they believe that their fellow humans must be sacrificed in order for them to attain the kind of affluence politicians’ display. Churches and Islamic worship centers spring up every morning like luxuriant mushrooms whereas the same spaces being converted to churches and mosques are where youths of the olden days used to look for jobs.

You can see how humans have corrupted godliness and made God an instrument of corruption. While the political leadership is daily cursed by the people for bringing them misery, we have conveniently forgotten the civil servants who are the worse things that can happen to a system with the way they operate. Can we examine what is happening in the power sector with the continuous collapse of the national grid in the hands of the Transmission Company of Nigeria. We have recorded twelve in a year, an average of one per month. This is notwithstanding the payment of prohibitive tariffs the continuous increase of which was promised would stabilize the sector. We get no value for the ‘banditry’ regime imposed on us for a better power supply while all the actors continue to smile home and to the banks both legally and illegality. All the evil servants that have caused us this misery still remains mysterious.

Are they not ashamed of themselves? Well, they cannot be ashamed because greed is immune to shame. No amount of public condemnation can put them to shame. The same can be said of the operators of our petroleum industry. No amount of legislative intervention can redeem that sector as the operators would never allow it to be implemented until the government is really serious to reform that sector. These are people that form part of the cartel that will never allow any reform to work. Whereas the sector has been moribund for ages notwithstanding the exploitative prices at which petroleum products are being sold to the masses and the throwing of good money on refineries that have consistently failed to work. The recent claim of Port Harcourt Refinery having sprung back into life is being awaited to be disproved as an April Fool prank.
Promises upon promises of reforms in the industry have consistently failed. These are just few examples of what goes on in government parastatals. Go to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and ask why it has been impossible to accomplish the Federal Government’s efforts at achieving food sufficiency. Civil servants have turned the system into a means of self-enrichment despite humongous amounts voted for agricultural development. This is where the government needs to do a lot of self-examination and introspection. Without purging the system of the bad eggs, we are just promising ourselves a horrible new year and a Christmas without merriment for the masses. It is lack of food security that has worsened hunger in the land that led to scores of souls perishing in the past few days where some good Samaritans desired to give back to the society through food distribution to the masses. For a nation to lose more than 30 children in Ibadan, 10 lives in Abuja and another 10 in Anambra just because of food is emblematic of the problem that is confronting us as a people.

Nigerians are so hungry that they have lost all sense of shame and dignity that they would rather die than go home without freebies being distributed by generous individuals who think of assuaging the problems of the people. This is where the government comes in. It is important for the government to examine what is the challenge confronting the people in accessing government facilities. It is necessary to examine the process by which civil servants perform their duties. Get private detectives to apply for services being rendered by these government offices for you to know the problems the people are having. Without such an introspective examination of the process by which civil servants render their services, all beautiful programmes and innovations being introduced by the government would end up worsening the lives of the people rather than improving them. These are the same civil servants that would be the first to condemn the government when they are the ones making life unlivable for the people.

Yet, they are everywhere today celebrating Christmas without imbibing the lessons of Christmas through the life of Jesus Christ. Their other religious counterparts are also busy celebrating the seasons without reflection on how they are the problems of the people. Lastly, what about the masses themselves? Are they the desirable lot that a working and progressive system requires? No. Not at all. Many Nigerians have become so denuded of electoral shame that they would rather vote a vote-buying politician than vote a person willing to genuinely serve.
They are everywhere now in all political parties moving from party leader to another looking for crumbs and free money. Many have abandoned their trades and taken to retail political jobbery by scrounging the tables of their leaders. They would rather vote whoever is able to bankroll their naming ceremonies and funeral services, pay their children’s school fees, indulge their madness of dependency than genuinely desire good governance. Yet, they are everywhere today lamenting how bad things have become. What an irony! Their case has become like that of the Yoruba proverbial Eluulu bird ((a uniquely feathered bird with reputation for its mystic power to cause rainfall) which, when it causes rainfall, has no house to hide from being drenched.

Our people have become like this bird as sooner than they collect pennies to vote and celebrate their ill-fated leaders by worshipping them, they are victims of misery and hunger they themselves voted into power. The same masses were in all churches on the eve of Christmas calling for miracles in the presence of extorting priests and pastors. Their Muslim counterparts are probably waiting for the yearly night vigil of December 31 to January 1 when they would wish all goodies to fall from heaven and make them instant millionaires in the new year. What a funny population we have! All the factories that used to employ thousands of youths in Ikeja in the olden days have become churches while vast expanse of lands along Lagos-Ibadan expressway and other cities have been turned to worship centers.

These are lands that would have served agricultural purposes and turn poverty into prosperity by employing all these idle hands that our youths have become. The same youths now go to these worship centers harassing God for jobs. Should the government take any step against these worship centers, it is the same youths that would be used to protest what they call ‘satanic’ government policies. How do we then celebrate and have a merry Christmas in the presence of this hydra-headed monster that is beleaguering our land? We need to really examine ourselves if the next Christmas is really going to be merry.