Nigeria: The Poor Shall Not Die!

 By Sunny Awhefeada

Delta State born gospel singer, Harold Ikuku, re­leased a popular album that was the rave of the moment in the tough and horri­ble years that the 1990s were. The song’s motif is “I shall not die”. Although a gospel song, it reso­nated with both Christians and non-Christians as a result of its affirmative message of survival in the face of brutal economic and psychological assault on the citizenry. 

It was this song that a man sang with so much gusto on hearing of the new pump price of petrol about three weeks ago, the second of such astronomical increase within two months of the present regime. When Presi­dent Bola Tinubu said, in his in­augural speech, that petroleum subsidy was gone, his handlers must have thought that it was a masterstroke in view of the fact that petrol subsidy had become an albatross for the Nigerian polity. 

Recrucifying Christ At Christmas

 By Banji Ojewale

Marching Jesus Christ boisterously to Golgotha for another experience of execution, excoriation and extirpation is exactly what we attempt to do every Yuletide. Although we gather ostensibly to celebrate His birth, what we really end up with is what we did that sent Him to the agony of Calvary. We shut out the Lord Who bore the death penalty we deserve as we drive ourselves into revelry not His will. We engage in epicurean feasts when we fail to reckon with what He commands: Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

As we ignore His word in the season’s ceremonies, we also look down on the friends of Jesus, the poor, the poached and the pricked. These pauperized of the society are our modern-day lepers, sentenced to a station of life away from enduring joy. But at Christmas, we lure them into our fold as objects of exhibitionist philanthropy. There’s hyped media blitz to record a one-off show of orgy where these hard-up citizens are sumptuously fed by the wealthy.