Fireworks cracked the skies to usher in 2025. On New Year’s Day, new babies were born across the globe, in cities, towns and villages. Trees grew new foliage, snakes shedded old skins and ants dug new holes. The New Year announces new life, a new beginning and throws all round the brightness of hope. But the shroud of death was seen on New Year’s Day too. A reminder that life and death are not too far apart. Joy and sorrow are conjoined twins.
And so we have walked into the New Year, expecting to start a new life, a life of happiness and prosperity. Charles Lamb once said that “no one regards New Year’s Day with indifference.” Another says this day is “the gate to the future and the finest time of all the year for new beginnings.” The poet Alfred Tennyson recalled a childhood instruction for his mother in a New Year’s Eve night to, please, “… wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear. Tomorrow ‘ll be the happiest time of all the glad New Year.” To the English novelist Charles Dickens New Year’s Day was “an infant heir to all the world, waited for with welcomes, presents, and rejoicings.” Floyd O. Rittenhouse, a reverend Christian gentleman, writes in his popular devotional Show Me Thy Ways, “A new year is one of Heaven’s oldest gifts to man. In hopeful anticipation we may receive it as an alabaster box of precious things: talents of time to employ judiciously, jewels of faith, courage … (and) occasions of service to those in need. It is exhilarating at the January gate to contemplate the pathways of the untrodden year.”
This New Year, as usual, has seen our own “men of God” come out with predictions of different kinds. Pastor Enoch Adebayo, general overseer of the Redeemed Church of Christ, has predicted that this year “kickers will be louder but many won’t survive to results of their effort.” He said people would achieve this year what they had struggled for for years. Bishop David Oyedepo, the lead pastor of Living Faith Church, predicts the year 2025 to be “the year of a new era and great chapters in the lives of believers.” Dr. Daniel Olukoya of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries says many people would experience marital bliss but warns that men who cheat on their wives would be destroyed by “marine agents.” Pastor Williams Kumuyi of the Deeper Life Church prophecies “positive explosion” in the lives of people “connected to the name of Jesus.”
All these predictions have been of a “better life” for people. Similar predictions were made last year and years before but few came to pass. 2024, for instance, saw the quality of life for most Nigerians deteriorate to a level never seen before. The prophecies this year so far have not said anything about certain political heavyweights dying mysteriously or unexpectedly. But it’s early days still. Also because this is no election year. We must remember the shroud hangs over our heads too to warn us to walk and work carefully. Yes, one other thing I’ve observed these early days of the New Year. A lesser eagerness on the part of Nigerians to make New Year resolutions, particularly those requiring changes in lifestyle. Perhaps because the hard times today make this unnecessary. Everybody is already making tough choices concerning day to day living. But difficult as the times are, we must face them and move on. As Rittenhouse said, “We must leave what is behind and not turn back. Challenges lie ahead. To turn back is to expose oneself to attack and encourage the backward drift.”
