Ramadan 2024 began on the eighth anniversary of my father’s passing. He died on March 11, 2016. They say time heals the pain of loss. It doesn’t. The pain just grows into this dull throb in your heart that spikes every now and then.
There is often no predictor for these spikes. It could happen sometimes when you are eating a perfectly made piece of suya, or when you hear a certain voice that triggers memories or see friends of your father or some random memorabilia. The trigger could be anything, to be honest. I have come to accept this pain as dewdrops that settle on grass blades every night. It is inevitable.
In the last eight years, I know I haven’t quite processed my grief. I know it is something that has been hanging over me which I have to deal with eventually. I haven’t written about this loss because I still can’t bring myself to, but in my head, there is an essay that has been forming for almost a decade now, if not longer. Today is not the day to write that essay.
Yet, on the first day of Ramadan, I find myself reflecting on my father, on mortality and the legacies we leave behind. On what it means to be here, alive, to experience the moments we experience, moments that will become memories, memories that will become legacies and legends when the last of those who remember us have gone into the light.
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It would seem that is a great way to start the month because Ramadan has always been intended to be a month of reflection on faith and what it means, on privilege and the lack of it and what that means as well, and the relationships we form with both the divine and the mundane.
Islam has always been a faith that is structured around communal practices and at no point in time, perhaps with the exception of hajj, is this communal practice more visible. There is the practice of eating together, of praying together and looking out for your neighbours and of giving. It is a beautiful period where most practitioners do beautiful things both in public and in private. But with the passing of the month, the lessons of the season are often forgotten. A return to status quo happens rather exponentially.
In this year, though, this Islamic year 1445, or 2024 Gregorian, any reflection on Ramadan that ignores the social realities of contemporary Nigeria would seem rather incomplete. Every Ramadan is different because every year is different. This year is different for all the wrong reasons.
For one, the Nigerian media has often settled on a word or phrase that defines the year. Some memorable ones over the years have been “Unknown Gunmen” and “Insurgency.” This year, the media word of the year is most likely going to be “Hardship.” This Ramadan is framed within this word because of the economic privation that has characterized the last year.
Saying that this year’s fast will be without the usual feast and pizzazz will be an understatement. Prices have skyrocketed, and earnings have not expanded to meet these needs. When the latest poverty data comes out in Nigeria, it is obvious that we will have more Nigerians falling below the poverty line, obviously because the naira has fallen against the dollar. This will, of course, reflect in the month of Ramadan, in which, contrary to expectations, people do tend to eat more. Iftars are occasions for lavish feasting, people host others to sumptuous banquets, and spending generally increases. Those banquets won’t be as rampant and as lavish as they used to be, I’m guessing.
But that is not the most distressing part. For those who are alive and free to fast, regardless of the availability of a banquet, it is a privilege to do so. That will not be the case for millions of families who are still languishing in displaced persons camps, who rely on handouts from kind-hearted Nigerians and Ukrainians too.
While scraping for a means of livelihood in the camps, waiting for grub from generous souls, people who have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the security situation in the country have no guarantees of safety. Recent reports of a Boko Haram resurgence are not good news to receive, and if anyone needs any proof of that, recently, the terror group gathered a group of women who had gone to gather firewood in Gamboru Ngala and disappeared with them into their dens. That they still have the capacity for these large-scale abductions is distressing. That anyone has this capacity in Nigeria today is really depressing.
It is even more the case with hundreds of families that have found themselves in the jaws of Nigeria’s notorious kidnapping-for-ransom trade. On the second day of Ramadan, bandits attacked the village of Buda in Kaduna, shot sporadically in the air and gathered some 61 people, as if they were gathering livestock from their farms. They proceeded to disappear with them into the forests in return for ransom payments.
The families of the abducted people are still awaiting news of their loved ones and the ransom demands that would be levied on them.
Days earlier, children between the ages of seven and 15 were abducted from their school in the first mass abduction of school children since 2021. At the last count, 287 students are still missing; their parents are in a state of anxiety and bedlam over the fates of their children and how they are going to find the means to pay for their ransom.
While Nigeria, as a country, has a policy not to pay ransoms for the release of abducted citizens, as reiterated by the Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, after this week’s cabinet meeting, which is the right policy to take in these matters, the country has failed to articulate and execute a definitive response policy to these abductions.
There have been instances of security personnel putting their lives on the line to rescue victims, but often families are left to negotiate with criminal gangs for the return of their loved ones. Criminals are often allowed to get away and continue terrorising the populace, feeding fat on the largesse of the ransoms. The consequences and reward scale are massively tilted in favour of reward for criminality, which has therefore made these crimes attractive and lucrative for the criminals. The criminality must be eradicated for the root of this no-ransom policy to have the desired resonance and serve as a deterrence for kidnappings.
So, there is a lot going on in Nigeria for Nigerians to reflect on in this season of devotion. The convergence of both Lent and Ramadan is a unique opportunity for Nigerians to pray for this country, but it is also a good opportunity to reflect on how we relate to each other and how kindness, even in small doses, goes a long way in making us better people.
Ramadan Kareem.
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