Yuletide: Time for Sober Reflection
By Eneruvie Enakoko
LAGOS DECEMBER 29TH (URHOBOTODAY)-As we celebrate the yuletide, we should try to keep our perspective on what’s truly important. This is certainly not the time to engage in antisocial behaviour, or indulge in some other excesses. It should rather be a time for sober reflection – a time to take inventories of our lives and ask some very fundamental questions. How have we been living our lives as Nigerians? Why are we in this geographical entity called Nigeria now? Why not some other country? Why now and why not a century ago or a century later? It may well be that we are here at this time and in Nigeria because we are significant to this generation.
The world today is all messed up, and our dear nation is no better. There is something fundamentally and basically wrong with Nigeria. We have dwelt so much on frivolities that we have discounted the essentials, so for us to live in a better nation free of crime, violence and so much hate, we must retrace our steps and recover lost precious values. Most Nigerians today cannot stand up for their convictions and so they judge what is right and wrong based on majority opinion. But the truth is that some things are right and some things are wrong. It is utterly wrong to hate and it is absolutely wrong to steal the collective wealth of Nigerians and stash it in foreign accounts or for the purpose of elections or to defend stolen mandates. It is wrong to pitch the north of this country against the south. It is wrong to incite ethno-religious violence and terrorism in the northern part of Nigeria and political uprising and hostage taking in the Niger Delta and the rest of the south, and it is wrong for political, religious and opinion leaders not to miss any moment to divide the nation along ethno-religious lines. It is clearly wrong to pursue vendetta and selective justice in the so-called anti-corruption war, and in our political and business dealings. Nature, God, call it whatever you like, has made some things to be absolute in this world.
Let us therefore use this opportunity and time to kill the attitude of “Whatever works, however unlawful or unacceptable is right.” Let’s kill the bandwagon attitude of “If everybody is doing it, then it must be right.” Let us kill the attitude of “It is alright to steal and rob as long as you steal and rob subtly.”
This is our time to do what is right and decide the fate and direction of Nigeria in the days and years ahead. As Martin Luther King’s Mentor and Morehouse College President Emeritus, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays said in his eulogy of Dr. King; “No man is ahead of his time. Every man is within his star, each in his time. Each man must respond to the call of God or nature (sic) in his lifetime, and not in somebody else’s time.” Real people, right-thinking individuals know that the time is always ripe to do that which is right and that which needs to be done.
And so I wish all of my fellow citizens, and friends around the world, a joyous celebration. A note of warning however to the rapacious political class in Nigeria: please, stop inundating us and the airwaves in this festive season with your spiteful political campaigns in the guise of goodwill messages, and allow Nigerians to enjoy the yuletide in peace and relative quiet.