CHRISTMAS CAME HOME WITH ME.
In Ohafia, a family is enough to make an event colorful. One family alone. Voices overlapping, laughter spilling, children running, elders watching quietly, is already a festival. Ohafia is a matriarchal society, strongly knitted, the kind where people do not just coexist but belong to one another. When I went home for Christmas, I realized that homecoming here is not a destination; it is a movement. You move from house to house, story to story, person to person. Names I had heard since childhood finally grew faces. Faces I had known refused to surrender their names. Still, I always knew how we were related. That knowledge sits deeper than memory.
My mum is from Asaga in Ohafia Local Government Area of Abia State, and in Ohafia, family is not a soft concept. It comes with responsibility, the kind you cannot outsource, the kind you can only carry properly if love is involved. It is amazing, I must say. Overwhelming sometimes, yes, but amazing. I talk a lot because gist dey house like mad. Very few people know this… although that might be a small lie. But in truth, conversation is the currency of home. Talk at home is not noise; it is inheritance. It is how values travel, how warnings are wrapped in jokes, how laughter softens hard truths. Somewhere between the soup pot and the plastic chair, politics always finds a seat.
Christmas slows you down enough to notice these things.
It also makes you pay attention to how life is organized beyond the family. Governance becomes personal when you see who is able to move freely, who can afford care, who no longer has to beg. Governor Otti has given the masses a voice, I promise. You can’t be deaf to his work. Free education. Free transportation. Safe roads. And now, the benefits available under the just enacted Senior Citizens Bill of Abia State. These are not abstract achievements. These are things people feel at bus stops, in hospitals, in families where old age used to mean quiet suffering.
But Christmas reflection cannot end in praise alone.
As the electoral process in Nigeria keeps changing, we must learn to change with it. While leadership is doing the work required to give people a better life, citizens must do the work required to keep good leadership in place. That means eligibility. That means participation. That means attention. We are members of many family groups, bloodlines, kindred, WhatsApp groups, etc. and family is the largest constituency ever. Quote me, man. (And yes, I really need a Ph.D.)
Let us be foot soldiers of good governance. Not loud activists, not online warriors only, but informed people. Educated on current electoral practices. Willing to explain, to argue, to insist. Government, whether we admit it or not, has what it takes to train, supervise, and maintain its workforce through structural compliance, monitoring and evaluation, and continuity. These are things many private companies, the same ones we admire so much, simply cannot sustain.
Private companies have strong PR. Their branding is attractive. Their offices are shiny. But their policies are often weak, and their loyalty ends where profit does. The one-man big-named offices. The unending framework parties. To beat monopoly and protect the many, the government must step in. And yes, the government has money to spend if carefully appropriated, especially on projects that directly benefit the masses.
You may believe you are above free transportation because you can afford private alternatives, but my darling, both systems are subject to the same structure exploiting you. You are being exploited until you have access to what is rightly yours. Believe me.
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And while we are here, let’s talk about faith.
If you must pray for flight money in the exercise of your faith, that is not faith, that is survival.
Pardon you?
Things should work around you for you to truly believe in the supernatural. Faith should not be a panic button. Your belief in God should not be built on desperation. You must consciously choose God, not cling to Him because systems have failed you. A functioning society gives faith room to be faith.
This is why political education must return to the most familiar spaces. Share electoral information in the family group chats. Start those debates. Ask uncomfortable questions. Fish out the Judas in your families first, trust me, they are always there. Corruption is sweet. Some people have been benefiting from the leak, and that is why corruption thrives in Nigeria: too many loyalists guarding the leak.
You may be financially comfortable enough to survive private systems, but many people are not. And while you escape, others endure the harshness that plays out daily in public parks and shared spaces. The government, flawed as it may be, still has the capacity to train and maintain a workforce that serves everyone, not just the privileged few.
Unrelated, but very telling: someone placed Orji Uzor Kalu’s photo and Otti’s photo together on a Christmas billboard at Igbere Junction. I laughed, but I also paused. Confusion thrives where political understanding is thin. And yes, it may finally make me pay attention to the long-standing Ohafia–Igbere beef. But symbolism matters. Christmas decorations can carry mixed messages when people are not properly sensitized.
So, let us be foot soldiers of good governance again, but gently, wisely. Let those of us who can carry current and correct information do so. Sensitization is not a campaign; it is a lifestyle. The kind this system deserves must start from the dining table and continue without end.
You really do not know the categories of people out there. People dey. People plenty. And that is why, while Otti is doing the work of dismantling broken systems, we must do the quieter work of carrying the right information and attitude into our families, our friendships, our everyday conversations.
Because people are a lot.
And change, like Christmas at home, only works when everyone shows up.
