Every 31st day in the month of December, Nigerians gather in their houses of worship in what they stupidly describe as cross-over night. What started as a Pentecostal gimmick by pastorpreneurs to raise funds from gullible folks to meet their desire to buy another jet or build another university that excludes the children of members is now an all-comers affair. It’s the race to woo the unseen being cutting across sects and religions with even media houses cashing in on the deal.
Disillusionment needs a place of succour, and the shrines provide that. If they fail to cash in when others are doing so, they lose out. Nigerians love their God as much as they love their sleaze. Every citizen is looking for an opportunity to make it. It is so important to make it that they even have a saying – fake it until you make it! As soon as the clock strikes midnight, ecstatic sounds of ‘Happy New Year’ rent the air across cities and towns, villages and communities.
It’s the age of social media, and everybody is in on the race to show where the new year met them. Telecommunications companies prime their slot machines to cash in on this ‘tradition’ of being the first to usher loved ones into the new year. Most people have no idea that the world is segmented into time zones, meaning that while it might be a few minutes past midnight, others across the globe are either already one day ahead or hours behind. It is amusing and we all are caught in it. Because enmity begins with not being prioritised or not being prioritised enough.
Being the last to be congratulated could mean being dropped below the pecking order. Happy new year – so what is it? Nothing about the end of one Gregorian calendar to the other comes with happiness. But who will tell them that only those positioned enough to steal public funds without repercussion are happy. Those having to pay exorbitant school fees because the public school system has collapsed would only be smiling as weeping openly is considered sizzy.
Not many people smile when they receive the crazy bills for electricity or water that is either not supplied or not supplied enough. There is nothing mirthful about traveling on the road at that hour not knowing who is lurking behind the shadows – an armed mugger, a kidnapper or a ritual killer. Even with the controversy over whether all the refineries are working at full blast, there is only a nominal drop in the pump price of petroleum products and either as a result or a consequence, the prices of essential commodities did not drop.
Given all this, even for those lucky enough not to be in a hospital, is it really a happy new year or aluta continua?
Happy new year is just a wish. Much like hitting the jackpot when you don’t play the lotto. The truth remains that most of us have borrowed to appear happy to impress those who only laugh at us. The year 2025 is not different from the ones preceding it. It is another year to look back and wish that Goodluck Jonathan, Umaru Musa Yar’adua, Olusegun Obasanjo or even the evil genius, Ibrahim Babangida is still in office. It will be another year of wishing that we could roam this open country without fear of being mugged, murdered or kidnapped.
Bad news ushered in the new year depending on where you are. Revelers in a New Orleans street were mauled by a compatriot turning his wheels into a weapon of mass murder. And almost simultaneously, a renter of a Tesla vehicle drove hundreds of miles towards Maralago, put a gun to his own head and caused the electric vehicle to blow up in flames, thankfully only ending his own life.
For Christians, the State of Palestine, traditionally the birthplace of Jesus Christ is not in celebration mood. Eight out of 10 Palestinians are in displaced camps, their former homes having been crushed by their cousins, the Israelis, who have sworn to annex their ancestral land by this year’s end. The illusion is that a land carved out by the United Nations barely six decades ago is the Promised Land.
There could not be happiness either in Russia or Ukraine. None of the two countries has succeeded in annihilating the other, but none is willing to stop the carnage for the average citizen to sustain their wish for a happy new year. Their last hope is that, narcissistic Donald Trump, the adult-kid that America elected, would somehow use his five seconds of lucidity to bring both sides to the round table for talks to prevent an early Armageddon. For now, Trump still has a hurdle as a New York judge has ruled he must face sentencing, arguing that immunity does not apply until he is sworn in.
These are not the only issues that snuff happiness out of the new year for America. The estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in America have no clue if they would escape Trump’s exit planes. What is obvious is that even vigilantes would be employed to get them to quit the country when Trump regains the throne he vacated four years ago. There is no happiness for those people and their families.
In my home country, Canada, the closest neighbour to America, the political landscape is as fluid as quicksand. Word on the street is that Justin Trudeau, the handsome youth that emerged Prime Minister in 2015, has burnt his candle of popularity at both ends becoming the underdog in an election he is said to be presumed to lose by landslide.
Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative candidate set to benefit from all these is playing his own Trumpophobia with a promise to deport the estimated 600,000 undocumented migrants from Canada. Trudeau’s last-minute sweeping reforms of the immigration system notwithstanding. This is bad news for migrants hoping to make it to paradise in North America or die trying.
Displaced global superpower, Great Britain, is not smiling into the new year. After changing more prime ministers than some parents change diapers, dropping Rishi Sunak for Labour’s Keir Starmer has not solved the riddle. Starmer’s popularity rating dropped by -38 per cent within six months in office, no thanks to unpopular decisions such as tax hikes and rebate cuts. The British economy is not at its rosiest and drastic action was needed to keep it floating.
Climate change is not on Britain’s side this year but even Starmer would not back out of the insane support for Zelensky’s war against Putin which has increased heating costs across Europe. The surrogate warmongers bent on destroying Russia won’t back down on their mission to re-enact a political David versus Goliath battle.
With all these troubles blowing in the change in the Gregorian calendar, the world has better fish to fry than the rants of those who argue that January 1 is a pagan celebration. Holidays are humanity’s sure way of taking a break from it all. It hardly has any spiritual effect except gluttony and binging are considered religious virtues. However, if being alive without assurance about how it will all end is what being happy is about, then let’s join a familiar refrain – happy new year.
Authorities must be very careful about approving recommended texts for the teaching of post-colonial Nigerian history because wrong decisions may backfire and instead of enhancing patriotism may merely serve to arouse passions and awaken sleeping dogs. It would be interesting to know beforehand which version of Nigeria’s post-colonial history will be taught to future generations as “the truth”?
Join Daily Trust WhatsApp Community For Quick Access To News and Happenings Around You.