BOBSON GBINIJE's article you should have read last Christmas.

Shebi na jeje I Siddon dey whack bread and akara the other night when my eyes narrowed down on the string of words on the half-torn newspaper that now served as my dinner plate. The room was dimly lit, courtesy PHCN, or what is it they are called now?

Well, I had a dying rechargeable lamp looking down on the meal; it did well to light up just the portion of the table where I had my now half-consumed bread and akara. I could now see the lettering of the write-up clearly.

"I can always read along while I down my meal," I thought. The article was about Christmas and the author added one vocabulary like that. I consoled myself that I will get the meaning by the time I am through with the article, but by the time I was done with the first, second paragraph, I had already looked for the name of the author. I thought it was the man from Edo's Oredo Constituency, Patrick Obaiagbon.

As I continued reading, the article was "sweeting" me, though I didn't understand much. See vocab! Jejune! What is jejuning? Did he imply ojuju? Perfidious! Machiavellian! Chei! This guy don quickly borrow 2 Pac name use o. Yawa dey! Anyway, the akara oyell didn't allow me see everything clearly sha, so I decided I must Google it, read and share. I found it on vanguard's website and it was there I discovered the article was actually published on the 29th of November, 2013. If you have not seen it, it is still news...

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Christmas and wanton revelry on november 29, 2013 at 12:55 am in viewpoint

The reason for the Christmas season is the commemoration of the glorious birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Christ. Although, the exact date of His birth remains an issue of great scholastic saber-rattling, one infallible truth that stands with unshakeable firmness is that Christ is the immaculate quintessence of love.

The commemoration of his birth is supposed to be a season of spiritual and physical retreat for stock-taking about how well we have lived a Christ-like life.

The synoptic and hedonistic zeitgeist that has now become the idiosyncratic concomitant of Christmas celebrants redounds to the truism that the spiritual epiphany of Christmas is now sunken in the quagmire of Dionysian exuberance. Hence, the Greek philosopher Socrates said in his PLUTARACH that “bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live”. The bacchanalian debauchery during Christmas season is morally nauseating.

The penumbra of darkness enshrining the subject of Christmas Day is further silhouetted by the avalanche and pyrotechnic of lies unleashed by religious harlequins. One school of thought said in the Encyclopedia American that “the reason for establishing December 25 as Christmas day is somewhat obscure, but it is usually held that the day was chosen to correspond to the pagan festivals that took place to celebrate the birth of the sun.

The Roman saturnalia is a festival dedicated to Saturn, the god of agriculture and to the renewed power of the sun. Some Christmas customs are thought to be rooted in this ancient pagan celebration.

All this not withstanding, the concern of this write-up is the ghoulish way and manner in which Nigerians, nay the people of the world, celebrate Christmas with prodigal intemperance and saturnalian revelry. There is no concern for the spirit of truth, peace, honesty and love, attributes that constitute the hallmark of Christ’s life.

How can one explain a situation where through random sampling our President, 52%of our legislators, 49% of our Governors, 50%of our Ministers, 50%of our local government chairmen, 60% of our councilors, 25% of our commissioners and 52%of Nigerians are Christians.

Yet we still luxuriate in corruption of monumental proportion. Christians are cocooned in filthy lucre, homosexuality and sodomy, grotesque terpsichorean fits in places of worship, assassinations, kidnappings, bribery and corruption, cultism, depraved economic and political prebendalistic graft. Which Christ are we celebrating? Which God are we celebrating?

Which Holy Spirit are we celebrating? How can we truly be celebrating Christmas when we walk past dead bodies, lepers, the poor and needy without batting an eyelid and sparing a thought for them. Adam Smith posits that “no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part, of the members are poor and miserable.

Christ admonished us to strive for the lofty and high ideals of a noble conscience and humanism, and that life is not all about money! money!! money!!! But about lifting up mankind, about sacrificing our lives to lift up mankind, about being Christ-like in conduct, about sparing a thought for the poor and about giving generously to mankind. Our churches, ecclesiastical hierarchy and Christmas alike, have made a very little impact on the moral growth of society because, they build their church close to St. Peter and yet worship at the gates of hell. A symphony of lunacy.

Christmas is not a season for jejune insipidity in spiritual matters. It is not a period for perfidious and Machiavellian dis-ingenuousness.

It is a period for our leaders and the citizenry at large to heighten the vibrancy of our cerebral virtuosity and eviscerate pragmatic solutions to the problems of mankind by being sober and musing on how, why and what Christ lived for.

We must desist from walking, dancing, strutting and drinking from the frills and thrills of libertines. Jesus Christ is love and all our utterances and actions should be propelled by love.

We must realise and be ever conscious; of the fact that life is ephemeral. It is volatile and evanescent. We must walk steadfastly with humility and fear of God, for no condition is permanent and nobody knows tomorrow.

Hence, essayist and poet, Matthew Arnold said: “….For we are all like swimmers in the sea, poised on the top of wave of fate, which hangs uncertain to which side to fall. And whether it will roll us out to sea to the deep wave of death, we known not and no search will make us know: only the event will teach us in its hour”. Therefore we must live for Christ and in Christ Jesus by serving mankind in truth and love.

Finally, we must see the world as one big philharmonic and symphony orchestrain which we are all players and so long as we pick our tunes and keys right, the musical configurations and rhythms will be melodious. But once one or two players degenerate to a discordant tone, the whole graceful symmetry and grandiose sublimity of the rhythm will precipitate a symphony of lunacy with no granule and scintilla of integrity in it. Let us celebrate Christmas by sparing a thought for the poor as Christ did and not saturnalian debauchery. HAPPY CHRISTMAS

BOBSON GBINIJE, founder of the Mandate Against Poverty, Warri.

I know, I know. don't you worry. I will break the content down to you: Baba simply said "You must buy a chicken, if not a goat, for me next Christmas.

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Lesson from the Highway.

When I got my car earlier this year, I had gotten a lot of exhortations during dedications which stare at me, sometimes knock my head any time I try to misbehave behind the wheels: speed kills, easy does it,  it is he who arrive home safe that knows how to drive (the Yoruba version is richer), see every other driver as insane, blah blah.

 

It has made me a better driver, or say an extremely cautious one. I only do my 160 when I'm in the mood (occasionally), I try my best to banter only the over-aged, and I fell in love with my mirrors, as pupsy always suggested.

All these instructions and one more little thought were in my head as I hit the road this weekend for Ibadan.  I wanted to arrive home safe, be as careful as I've always been, but I also wished to drive all the way and have no one overtake me. Crazy huh? It was just a wish...I have always had it but I seldom see it through.

So, the party begun, slow and steady, then faster and a little faster as I let my leg hit the gas pedal. Good music coming from the radio, oye pumping from its vents, it is just matter of time before I get to Ibadan.  I started taking on the buses, cars and trucks one after the other. Some fought back, some too overloaded to notice me breeze off right before their eyes.  

This was becoming fun until something terrific happened. Calm down, it wasn't an accident, just an oldie approaching on top speed from nowhere. I first saw the headlight through the mirror. It was far away I thought, so I drove on unperturbed. The next time I checked my mirror I saw nothing and was smiling to myself thinking I had lost him when he honked, right beside me and overtook me. Some old pile of wtf*! How on earth did that happen? I thought I was invincible.

"O kere," I whispered, as I started my comeback. I can take it when young Sequilla 2009 or a younger 2010 Toyota Camry overtakes me and leaves me behind. I am not always hurt even when my age mates mess with me on the road, but for this old ragged Carina God-knows-what-model to just come and dazzle like it has got Lewis Hamilton behind the wheels?  Impossible! The production of your clan has even been discontinued.  I accelerated hard, heard clearly as the car transmitted automatically and entered top speed, but my oga-at-the-top as I later found out had other plans.  he had discovered what I was up to, and he was willing to give me a run for my money. He drove on in full speed too.

People we drove by could tell there was a race on. "Maybe his speedometer doesn't even work," I cursed, as I discovered I was doing 140+. I gently hit the brake as we approached 2 trucks dulling off their destinies. One was trying to overtake the other and you could tell it was gonna take eternity before that happens. We've got to overtake them both before the space chokes.

Carina E did as I expected, overtook the latter truck and I watched him sashay away as the truck blared the horn and closed the gap. I jumped in my seat and beat myself as one truck snail-ly overtook the other. By the time they were done crawling, I only saw 2 red tail-lights far away.

*          *          *

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong...Eccl 9:11

Most times, we humans see life as a competition. I've got to do it better, be more famous, be richer, wear it better. We compete with people whose destinations differ from ours.  people whose purpose in life are world's apart when compared with ours. Just go ahead and do your thing your own way. Don't make other people's life your yardstick for success. The learning point is to "drive" and make sure you arrive home safe.

You are not limited by age, skin color or anything. Don't look down on yourself.  you can achieve anything. The content matters as much as the container. The driver of that supposed old car did not feel inferior. He knows what he's got and what he is capable of. It takes a good driver to win the race, not just a good car.

Speed still kills.  That was my consolation as I drove on silently on a night I had to settle for being the second best.  Now that you have picked the "tori", this festive period and beyond, I take God beg you, please let's not be like that oga who was over-speeding o. God go dey keep us o. Compliments.

ONCE MINT, NOW MUTILATED

Someone told me the value is still N1000 Naira, “but in this Nigeria of ours, it will be rejected, couple of times, back to the holder before he finally gets to spend it”, I responded.

Everyone I know prefers mint notes to the readily available just-fit notes and the seriously-used, fragile mutilated ones. Bring out a fresh packet and people will be willing to exchange some and up their wallet’s game.  A colleague once said mints even make some fools go hungry; they blatantly refuse to spend the ones they have got in their wallets. Even a toddler, when offered an “untouched” note (like folks around here call it) and a dying one, will quickly smile and leap towards the shinning one. Someone said the beggars too have started refusing bad notes.

The intelligent Nigerian money-hawkers are not oblivious of this.  That’s why they always have mints readily available for sale at a particular percentage. It is what they sell day in day out.  Even when all the banks in Nigeria including the CBN itself claim there are no mints at hand, these guys have it. They are everywhere ranging from markets to churches and all around event centers. I wonder what they say when they want to advertise their goods “e ra owo e nawo o (buy money to spend o!)”, maybe.

I am not a freak for mint though. Give me all the mutilated notes u have and I will collect them from you. I’m even thinking of starting a business up in that line. I’ll call it MutiSweep. I’ll help change all the money being rejected in the circulation to ones that you can still spend, for a token too. Mine is different cos I won’t be offering mints in return.  Be that as it may, I also will prefer to have mints flashing in my wallet as against the “konde” collections I currently got. Mint rules.

Not to deviate, I am not trying to promote the locations where you’ll readily get mints to spend this Sallah. It was one of the bad notes that was dispensed to me by my bank’s machine that prompted this. I held that note with disdain and wondered if “this note too was once mint”. On the thousand note, Alhaji Aliyu Mai-Bornu looked as sad as sadness itself, like someone being blackmailed, with stretch-marks all over him. If you do not look closely, you will not know it is the picture of the first indigenous governor of Central Bank of Nigeria. Dr. Clement Isong on the other hand seemed to be crying. The look on his face was that of a prisoner who has just been denied parole. I imagined the number of different places it has been tucked, the number of pockets it has been squeezed. You know what I am saying. I turned it both ways to reconsider it; it was really in a pitiable state.

There was a time, long ago, or not too long, depending on the experience that particular note had, when it was mint too. Everybody wanted it, it was pampered and spared until say, one day, the holder got very broke and eventually spent it.  Maybe he bought roasted plantain and groundnut. As soon as mama plantain confirms it was not fake, slips it into the you-know-where, not minding its mint state. Later in the day, the farmer shows up with new supplies of unripe bunch of plantains as usual, and after checking it out, mama dips her hand, stained with sap, wax and charcoal, into the “foreign reserves”, sorts the money there-in and hands it over to the farmer who folds it thoroughly before tucking it into his inner pocket. Just maybe. The rest they say is history.

Pal, are you in a mint state right now and you are feeling fly? Have you got the tendency to look down on others because of their lowly state? Or you just believe outright that you are simply the best and no one compares? This short write up is for you. Take a cue from it.  No one knows tomorrow. No condition is permanent. Time and chance may just happen to you and things may just fall apart. Remember also that someone got it better. A $100 bill, as at today is 16 times minter than a N1000 note, so calm down.

For those out there who know deep down they are not there yet, I have good news for you: unlike in the currency story, where states simply deteriorates, human state can move from bad to good. In our world, no law reaches it that it must always get worse. You can consciously work your way to the top too. Work smart, pray harder, do things differently and try to break the habits.  On a lighter mode, drink a lot of Peak Milk cos greatness is in you.

I'll need a glass of milk myself to start with. 

Have a great day.