No Xmas Dinner For The Fisherman

By Banji Ojewale

Kotei chewed on the flameless cigarette between two fingers on his left hand, regretting it was the last he took from the pack. He wished the manufacturers could load more into the paper box. He wouldn’t mind the cost, as long as it reduced the frequency of his visits to Handzin Ayen, two streets away, for the stuff. This would also ensure he would not run out of the stuff too early. But there was a bigger worry: for years he had always failed his New Year resolution to quit the smoke.

 At the moment, Kotei was in the Yuletide loop. In a few days, the year would be running its course and make a demand on him to decide on old ways to disallow from following him into the incoming one. 

Instinctively, Kotei holding a pack of cigarettes, would recite the legend: I promise not to smoke again. I won’t ever go to Handzi Ayen for the cigarettes, even if she asks me to come for them for free. I’m now going to smoke these ones as a parting shot. Thereafter it’s bye-bye. They go away from me. Depart with the departing year. You won’t go with me into the new one. So, help me God! 

The Many Contradictions Of Muhammadu Buhari

By Reno Omokri

President Muhammadu Buhari has blamed everybody but himself for his problems and now that he has gotten to the end of his tenure, he has run out of human beings to blame, so he has now been reduced to blaming inanimate objects.

*Buhari 

I mean, on Christmas Day he told the visiting Federal Capital Territory Christian community that his anti-corruption war had not really taken off because the Nigerian system was slow. Well, he does have a point, because if the Nigerian system had been working, Muhammadu Buhari would have faced a firing squad for overthrowing the democratically elected civilian administration of President Shehu Shagari on New Year’s eve of 1983.