Today is Christmas, the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ – a day Nigerians usually join the rest of the world to be merry. But we are sad.

In the history of Nigeria, apart from the Christmas Days that fell within the civil war years, today is probably the first Christmas in peace time wherein some Nigerians of conscience may not be merry. The reasons are many, but it’s mainly due to the tragic death of our kith and kin who died scrambling for food in a country God blessed with all imaginable resources.

  The tragedies that occurred on December 18 and 21 were not the first food scrambling related stampedes that have happened. On February 23, 2024, at least five people died in Lagos when the Nigeria Customs Service sold seized 25kg bags of rice at cheaper prices. One month later, on March 22, 2024, at least two persons died and 23 others were injured in another stampede when hundreds of students of Nasarawa State University scrambled to get 7.5kg bag of rice each and N5, 000.

A proactive police force would have learned something from those two previous stampedes, and through intelligence gathering, made its men ready to nip in the bud further stampedes by either promptly arriving at the scenes of such swelling crowds, controlling them, or completely suspending distribution of the food items. But not our own Nigeria Police. Two days later, on March 24, 2024, four women got trampled to death in another stampede in Bauchi at the venue of food distribution by a Bauchi-based philanthropist.

In less than two weeks, on April 6, 2024, another stampede occurred at the residence of the Senator Aliyu Wamakko in Sokoto, claiming nine lives with 30 others injured during the distribution of Sallah items.

What better warning signals could have a proactive and efficient police force gotten than those similarly recurring tragedies? And what assurance can Nigerians get that the Nigeria Police has learned something, even from the December 18 and 21 food scrambling stampedes? The Nigeria Police must sit up and justify the taxpayers’ money spent to hire and pay them.

For the Nigerian government officials whose policies inflicted this mass poverty on the people, we warn that time is running out. Nigerians cannot continue like this. Something is bound to give.

The Federal Government should promptly move to address the prevailing economic problems that have impoverished many and left them at the mercy of hunger and possible starvation. 

We wish our numerous esteemed readers, indeed all Nigerians, a Merry Christmas.