New Year palaver: The school resumptions confusion

The first cockcrow grinds our souls

The dawn and the crowd are in a chase again

Through blue mist.

Impatient gestures, gasps and curses and incantations

…everything conjured here rattles again.

— Chinedu Ezeanah (Poets of Lagos)

A NEW dawn is here; another year has just begun with its own perplexities.

First, it started with a demonic game, Charlie Charlie, next, the Covid-19 second wave followed through, then death news, and now school resumption palaver.

All these could make one ask if 2021 would make a good year.

Meanwhile, about the covid-19, most people haven’t fully accepted its realness, questions are being asked:  “is corona virus real or is the government trying to make excuses with it?” Others would argue that it’s real, due to the fact that it caused the death of their loved ones or people whom they know.

In as much as the authencity of this virus in Nigeria is not fully known yet, it’s advisable that everyone should be on their guard and stay safe.

ON the matter of school resumption, I heard and read that the House of Representatives has pushed a motion stating that the date should be shifted by three months. As a student, I’m baffled at such motion. University students have already lost a year as a result of the pandemic conjoined with the Association of Staff Union of University (ASUU) strike. If I may ask, if the virus isn’t gone in three months time, does that mean we would wait for some months again?

It would have been better if lessons could be taken digitally, but bad enough, the education system in Nigeria lacks enough facilities to make it possible.

Nigeria experienced economic setback last year, should we fold our arms and watch it happen again?

The truth is, we cannot fully eliminate the virus but we can learn to live with it; gradually, it will fade in its time.

Let distribution undo excess

And when the passover is over

Let me sing of ornamentals

To heal the scare of our rape and

The vestiges of decadence.

— Nduka Otiono (Voices in the Rainbow, 1997).

Happy New Year to my readers, it’s better late than never.