May 2023 be an annus mirabilis for us

Time is a continuum, an endless flow of seconds, minutes, and hours. Time flows into eternity. And the division of time yields the seasons depending on the part of hemisphere where one is living. So we have the dry and rainy seasons in Nigeria whereas in Europe and America, they have autumn, spring, summer, and winter.

Time passes, not mindful of us. But we bear the tell-tale signs of the passage of time. The passage of time daubs our hairs with gray and plaster wrinkles and crinkles on our faces. And we are gnarled with age, an evidence that time has passed. So the once ramrod straight young man has become a bent dawdling old man. Time robs us of our youthful vigour. Is time not a thief of youthfulness?

Again, time hurries us into our graves, our places of eternal rest. Do people not die of old age? And it whiplashes us with tragedies and drapes us in bountiful blessings. Traveling on the path of time makes us have a rollercoaster of emotions.

Time journeys to no end. Since the beginning of the world, which is immemorial, time has not paused in its movement, even for once. Time travels in cycles, an endless cyclical movement. And the day is forever on the heels of the night. The days give birth to week. And the weeks give birth to month; and the months to year.

We have just ticked off the year 2022. It has entered the annals of our history. In the succeeding years, some people will gleefully remember it with nostalgia whereas the mere mention of it will bring tears to the eyes of other people. Some people achieved their goals in 2022 whereas the hopes of other people for a better future were dashed in 2022. Such is the attribute of the passing time: it serves us different dishes.

For example, in the year 2022, I lost my dear mom, who was my boon companion. A part of me died with her; and a void was created in my life. But I soldiered on in the same way as other bereaved people have done. Death is an integral part of living; the end of our lives’ journeys. But its finality as well as irreversibility causes us deep sorrow and anguish.

In the year 2022, some prominent Nigerians exited our terra firma of evils. And they have become our ancestors, watching over us from the spiritual dimension. But most of our ancestors who worked tirelessly for the betterment of Nigeria had become poltergeists owing to the evil happenings that occur in Nigeria, frequently. Nigeria, as she is now, is not the type of country they imagined or envisioned for us.

In the year 2022, which we are bidding good-bye, the perpetrations of homicidal deeds in Nigeria were commonplace. Human life has lost its sacredness. Young people who are high on drugs killed other people for flimsy reasons. They do not consider killing other people as a sacrilegious act.

That’s why bandits, terrorists, and insurgents roamed freely, unchallenged, in the north, killing people and kidnapping rich Nigerians for ransom. They are fighting to achieving their theocratic and ethnic goals at the expense of human lives.

And in the year 2022, the economy of Nigeria was distressed as evidenced by the depreciation of the naira. The naira, which is doing yoyo in the money market, is worthless and very weak against the dollar and other currencies. That is why the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has proposed measures, which it will execute to shore up our economy.

More so, in the year 2022, millions of Nigerians couldn’t exit from the quagmire of excruciatingly poverty. Yet the APC-led government had promised that it would lift millions of impoverished Nigerians out of poverty. But the reverse obtains in our country, what with millions of unemployed young Nigerians roaming the streets in search of the white and blue collar jobs, which are non-existent in the country.

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Even those who are employed by the government do not receive salaries, which can be called living wages. They are grossly underpaid in relation to the jobs they do. The federal government-ASUU impasse was partly caused by wage issue. While the thieving politicians live large, the government employees live from hand to mouth. And both the state and federal governments seldom review government workers’ salaries upward so as to alleviate their suffering caused by our economic distress.

Now, it is obvious to us that our leaders are insensitive to our plight. The federal government -Asuu impasse, which caused the closure of our government-owned universities for eight months, highlights the insensitivity of our political leaders. As a country, the year 2022 has gone down in our history as the year our university students stayed at home for eight months for no faults of theirs.

But a new year beckons to us. It is a clean slate on which we will write. We should resolve to do the right things and make efforts to rescue Nigeria from the jaws of economic and technological stagnation.

2023 is a general election year for us. So let us cast our votes for a competent, patriotic, visionary, knowledgeable, honest, and humble presidential candidate, who can transform Nigeria, positively, if he or she wins the presidential election.

I urge us not to factor in the factors of ethnicity and religion when choosing the next president of Nigeria. Let us bear this in our minds as we make our electoral choices in 2023: there is a nexus between national development and good political leadership.

May 2023 be an annus mirabilis for us.