2023 is just a week old today and already new resolutions are being made by those who feel they need a change of attitude, character, approach and methodology in doing things better. Many however have commenced the new year as usual, with laying strong spiritual foundations through prayer and fasting to solidify the spiritual space for easy and smooth, calculative and devil- free socio- economic and political transactions. Times like these ate those of sover reflections by wise people who.take stock of previous years achievements/ challenges and meditate on new ideas. It is the wish of every human being to.do that to advance his or her course even if its not put to practice subsequently.
Here in Nigeria, we pray for a new lease of life: economically, socially, spiritually, politically and otherwise. We pray God to help lift Nigeria and Nigerians from their present positions of life.
As people privileged to be alive, we must give God praise and thanks for His sufficient grace and mercies upon us all through the year. From January to December 2022, alot has happened and some incidents have consumed many people. To have survived the unprecedented and precarious insecurity, economic crisis, dynamic poverty, kidnappings, terrorism, floodings, misgovernance, etc is to thank God immensely. Many have died because they could not afford 500 naira to buy their daily medications for high blood pressure and many have died because they could not afford to know what is their medical problem. We are not more than those who have left, we are only lucky to be alive. Alot of people who started the previous year with us could not make it to yesterday being the last day of the year. Some even died minutes or seconds to the new year after every preparation for the celebration of the new year. Many things have happened to many people and none of us could explain. There is no one that is too big to die or too small to live. All of us are the same before the creator and none more important than the other. Whether you have mineynor not, occupying a position or not, it’s just a matter of God’s discretion to call or leave you.
So therefore, we must show gratitude to God for this kind gesture. We can only show this by loving ourselves and avoiding unnecessary bitterness towards on another. We must keep aside pettiness,envy, jealousy, malice, unforgiveness and anything that seeks to pull us down and embrace peace and love.
We have passed through alot in this country for us not to learn how to live in peace with one another. We were created with different ethnic, tribal and religious background for us to justify why we should have been created in the first place. God Almighty did that to see how we will conduct ourselves and whether we will show the difference as human beings. But we failed God in many ways and have disappointed Him severally. He is not man, but God who easily forgives when we realised our shortcomings and limitations. He has never refused to hear or forgives us and He has never punished us as we deserve because of His richness of love. So why can’t we do things differently to get His support, endorsement and blessings?
As we start the new year, I urge us to digest this simple but very important and fundamental message. We must resolved to practically and sincerely change our ways and actions. We must up our understanding and tolerance of one another to make our communities beautiful and peaceful, stable and prosperous.
As we face the transitional election come February 2023, we need to reflect on what we want and what we need as a people. We need to be deeply concerned about the leadership deficit in this country. Because every action and its outcome boils down to how leadership is driven,means that we must not play or take for granted leadership at this age and time. We have suffered severe outcomes due to bad leadership so therefore we must ensure that credibility, integrity, sound performance and compassionate guides our decisions.
At this stage, we must have decipher between good and bad people, those who are out to work and those who want to use the privilege positions to enrich themselves and look down on the people. There are those in positions of leadership today that are total regret to even those who voted them. There are those who have no respect for their people people they were not voted into office, but were rigged and imposed. These category of persons have exposed their evil agenda in governance and need not come close to power again. We need Representatives who can respect the people regardless of their wealth and not those who got wealthy because of the people only to arrogantly reduce the people to nothing. Enough is enough to the wise.
Before I round up this new year column, I implore every registered voter in Nigeria to sit up and be vigilant. We must all collect our PVCs to enable us vote. We must vote wisely. The BVAS are in place to reduce or eleiminate any fraudulent irregularity and we must go and collect them to use on the election day.
