I don’t know what’s happening in your locality. However, I can’t see any preparations for Christmas in my own area
A long while ago, when I was a tot, I used to count the months. Christmas was odun kekere while the New Year was odun nla.
My dad was abroad then, but I trusted my mum not to disappoint me. And she never did. She would buy clothes for me—a pair for Christmas and another for New Year.
God bless her soul; she knew good things.
I could escape with more than two pairs of clothes if I was lucky. Of course, when Christmas was approaching, I would have turned to an acting-good boy. That means I would have stopped misbehaving.
I just cited myself as an example.
You could feel a magnificent event coming up in the air. The harmattan season did not need to be invited. Of course, we were not talking about global warming then.
Who ate imported rice, then? Even when we decided to eat imported rice, we ate American long-grain rice like Uncle Ben’s. Thai rice? Tufiakwa!
We feasted on local chickens with much stronger bones than today’s broiler.
However, it is a different ballgame now. All we are hearing now is a recession.
What concerns little children with recession? Abeegi!
Even the youngsters know that the country is hard. But that does not stop the ruling class from living like the biblical prodigal son.
There are advertisements these days for locally produced rice to be sold for a whopping thirteen thousand naira per fifty kilograms, while imported rice sells for about seventeen thousand naira for the same quantity.
The minimum wage remains at eighteen thousand naira. But then, many states cannot pay salaries as when due. I keep wondering whether our dear country had ever been so bad in the past.
That means rice, which has become the staple food of most children, is still unaffordable, at least for this Christmas. Parents have yet to include the cost of clothes for Christmas and the new year.
I can hardly see any Christmas lights in any house around me. That means we are not ready for THIS Christmas.
So, may I beg whoever oversees this Christmas to do us a favour.
Postpone this Christmas!!!
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