Deaths and blood rituals for bulaba balablu Christmas

Deaths and blood rituals for bulaba balablu Christmas ‘It will get worse before it gets worse’. That was the title of my article published here and in other newspapers on November 21, 2023, six months after Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, assumed office, and started his incoherent economic policies and programmes. The chicken is coming home to roost but it’s doing so at the cost of limbs, livelihoods and lives of the majority of Nigerians who are at the receiving end. Everyday we wake up to news of tragedies, especially of avoidable accidents, miseries and needless deaths. Tragedies now straddle the land – at home, school, market, highway, sea/river, farm, stream, bush path. Everywhere, really. There are no safe places in our country anymore. Nigerian lives no longer matter. Generator fumes wipe out families in their sleep. Kidnappers are no longer content with snatching travelers on the highways; they now pluck them from their homes, and kids from their schools, playgrounds, and classrooms. Terrorists, bandits, and sectarian insurgents who for political correctness were christened herdsmen invade farmlands and rape women and girls, slaughter  men and occupy  farms. Markets routinely go up in flames, many of them suspected to be acts of sabotage designed to cause economic dis-empowerment of a section of the country. Panels of inquiry follow such incidents but the results usually come to naught. There’s no life for a vast majority of Nigerians, and where there is, it is cheap. PLEASE READ: Nigeria: Challenging the Dysfunction, Rebuilding the Institutions When we wrote on November 21, last year that things will only get worse in this country we had no inkling it will be this bad. We had wished that we will not be vindicated because the consequences will be dire. The reality today is that Nigeria is in a dire straits. But the truth is that in spite of the acute poverty gripping Nigerians right now, the prognosis is that the future, at least the near future, is not looking good. If truth be told the future for many Nigerians is foreboding. What we wrote 13 months ago could have been written today and they will not be widely off the mark. The first three paragraphs of that entry unedited read: “Nigeria is in the intensive care unit and its caregivers appear not to be perturbed. No. They are actually engaged but not in attending to a gravely ill patient. They make platitudes on the delivery of their promises but commit to attending to their hedonistic desires and pleasures. “It is 146 days (as at November 21, 2023) since another set of rulers took the reins of power in Abuja. But not for one day have Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief. It has been like the reign of the Biblical rebellious Absalom in one part of the divided Kingdom of Israel. Absalom had told his subjects that whilst his father King David chastised them with the whip, he would do the same with the scorpion. Under former President, Maj.-Gen. Mohammadu Buhari, Nigeria suffered afflictions of unimaginable proportions. Indeed as that clueless regime that was bereft of imagination and humaneness was winding down, the common refrain from Nigerians was: Never Again. Many citizens believed that no future administration in Nigeria will be worse than Buhari’s in terms of abuse of power, impunity, desecration of democratic ethos, insensitivity to the country’s diversity, disregard for the suffering of citizens and intolerance of critical and opposing views. Obviously, we were mistaken”. The extant regime which we wrote about when it was six months old in November last year will be 20 months in office by next month, January 2025. Loyalists and choristers of ‘on your mandate we shall stand…” will still fly off-the-handle to insist that it is still too early to assess the capacity of the regime with a four-year mandate. We will grudgingly concede that they may be right. However, the challenge is that there are virtually no indications that the needles for economic recovery and good governance are moving in the right direction, even if slowly. The experience is that of deterioration in the living standards of many, crisis in the cost of living, runaway inflation with food inflation about 40%, imported inflation caused by the country’s overwhelming dependence on imports and the poor exchange rate. The prediction is that many of these indicators will continue to head south for the foreseeable future. The consequences of forlorn hope which has trumped Tinubu’s ill-fitting  mantra of Renewed Hope are beginning to increase in their effects. You don’t need to listen to hear the groans of the people. You don’t need to be sensitive to feel the despondency of citizens. The sound of hopelessness is loud and clear. Nigerians are buffeted and the country could just be sitting on a keg of gunpowder. But do our rulers know about this clear and present danger? I doubt it otherwise they won’t still be behaving like Nero who serenaded himself with the wafting sounds and melodies from his flute while Rome burnt. If they know that the folks are hurting they probably will not continue their hedonistic indulgences by parcelling significant portions of the 2025 national budget to themselves. As in the budget of this year, hefty sums in billions have been carved out in next year’s appropriation bill to buy sport utility vehicles (SUVs) for themselves, their consorts, cronies, and their acolytes; renovate mansions, residences and offices; procure cooking utensils and cutleries; provide fittings, fixtures and furnishings; pay for offshore frivolous junkets and carousing; gorge themselves on foods and drinks at banquets; organize trainings at home and abroad where nothing useful are learned; set up additional ministries, departments and agencies that fail even before they take – off; and, sundry things that suit their fancies. Almost N50 trillion is said to be the size of the proposed 2025 budget. But by this time next year Nigeria will at best still be stagnant, and at worst deteriorated further in the

Late COAS Lagbaja: Tinubu Confers Post-Humous Honour of CFR

President Bola Tinubu on Friday conferred a post-homous award of the Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR) on the late Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja. He made the declaration during the interment in honour of the late warrior at the National Cemetery in Mogadishu, Abuja. The President extoled the virtues of the late warrior, eulogising his contributions to national security. According to Tinubu, the appointment of Lagbaja as the COAS was one of his finest made so far. The event had in attendance Vice President Kashima, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Defence Minister, governors and top military officials. Last week, Tinubu announced Lagbaja’s death, saying the late warrior passed away in Lagos after a period of illness. Born on February 28, 1968, Lagbaja served as the Chief of Army Staff for one year and four months. President Tinubu appointed him to the role in June 2023. He played pivotal roles in numerous internal security operations, including Operation ZAKI in Benue State, Lafiya Dole in Borno, Udoka in Southeast Nigeria, and Operation Forest Sanity across Kaduna and Niger States.