(more…)

By Lasisi Olagunju

If we were Christian in my family, Christmas would have been for us a mixture of joy, mourning and remembrance. But still, it is. When others celebrate Christmas, I mourn my mother. We call it celebration of life; it is a forever act that undie the dead. She died just before dawn on December 24, 2005. But she lived long enough such that even I, her second to the last child, enjoyed her nurture for over forty years. She died happy and fulfilled. She was extremely lucky; she even knew when to die.

A mother’s death strips her child naked. With a mother’s exit, the moon pauses its movement of hope; morning stops arriving with its proper voice. For me, since it happened 20 years ago, dawn still breaks as forever, but nothing raps my door to announce a new day and the time for prayers; no mother again chants my oríkì. No one, again, softly drops ‘Atanda’ by my door before sunrise. Nothing sounds the way it used to. No one again wets the ground for the child before the sun fully unfurls its rays.

History and literature, from Rousseau’s idealisation of the “good mother” to Darwin’s notion of “innate maternal instincts,” framed motherhood narrowly; yet she inhabited it fully. She bore and reared in very inclement weather; she thought and questioned, endured and, quietly, shaped lives in her care beyond the ordinary. She was a princess who knew she was a princess. Like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s princess in ‘A Little Princess’, her voice – outer and inner – shouted an insistence that “whatever comes cannot alter one thing.” Even if she wasn’t a princess in costume, she was forever “a princess inside.” The princesshood in her inheritance ensures that her father’s one vote trumps and upturns the 16 votes cast by multi-colour butterflies who thought themselves bird.

Sometimes quiet, sometimes shrill, she showed in herself that the true measure of a woman lies in the fullness of her humanity, the strength of her mind and character, and the depth of her influence. She embodied all these with grace until her final breath.

Geography teaches us that harmattan is dry, cold, hash, unfriendly wind. The harmattan haze of Christmas is metaphor for the blur the child who misses their mother feel. It hurts. The day breaks daily with silence performing the duty the mother once did. What this child feels is hurting silence where her song caressed. In the harshness of the hush, the child remembers how mornings were once gold, how a day felt owned simply because she announced it. Without her, time still moves, but it no longer rises to meet the child with its promise of warmth.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: The Terrorists Are Winning

When a mother dies, her child’s gold goes to rust and dust. Because a mother is the cusp that scoops to fill her child’s potholes, in her death something essential goes missing. And it is final. Everything that was a given is no longer to be taken for granted; nothing is henceforth granted; everything now makes bold demands, even illness speaks a new language. Fever comes creepy and no one reads the child’s body before they speak. Across the wall at night, other women sing their children to sleep, the tune that reaches the motherless is far from the familiar; it is unfaithful.

A child without a mother is what I liken to walking helplessly in a windy rain. No umbrella, whatever its reach and promise, is useful. Again, living is war. When wronged, or terrified by life, the child who has no mother discovers how far they can walk without refuge; they daily face bombs without bunkers.

For the one without a mother, each victory, each success; each survival; every loss, every defeat, asks for a sharer and a witness who is no longer seated where she used to.

Winning can be very tasteless. It is a very bad irony. The muse says that when a child is motherless, joy, when it appears, arrives incomplete; good news, when it comes, comes and pauses at the lips – in search of mother, the one person it is meant for.

Motherhood and its echo teach that a mother’s loss, like a father’s, is erasure, loss, negation, unpresence. It is permanence of loss of love and security.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Absurd Wars, Absurd Lords

The child remembers that in their mum’s lines were elegant, restrained refinements that moved from the gently lyrical to the aphoristic. But they are no more. The old sure shoulder to lean on has slipped away, thinning into memory.

The orphan learns early that those who say, “I will be your mother,” are not always mothers, and those who say, “I will be your father,” are rarely fathers. For the orphan, it is a cold, cold-blooded world.

And yet, the child soon finds out that the mother’s exit has not emptied the world; it has simply rearranged its content.

In the new arrangement, the mum becomes a mere memory kept going in inherited habits, in routine and practice, in the instinct to call a name they know will not answer – again.

“Each new morn…new orphans cry new sorrows…” says Shakespeare in Macbeth. Every forlorn child fiddles with the void. But the muse insists that children that are counted fortunate do not simply outgrow their mother; they outlive her absence and grow new muscles and new bones; they learn slowly to carry and endure what cannot be put down.

The Federal Government has declared December 25, 26 and January 1, 2026, as public holidays.

Announcing this on behalf of the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Magdalene Ajani, said the holidays are to mark Christmas, Boxing Day and the New Year celebrations respectively.

Tunji-Ojo called on Nigerians to reflect on the values of love, peace, humility and sacrifice associated with the birth of Jesus Christ.

READ ALSO:Lagos Declares Holiday For Isese Festival

The minister also urged citizens, irrespective of faith or ethnicity, to use the festive period to pray for peace, security and national progress.

According to him, Nigerians to remain law-abiding and security-conscious during the celebrations, while wishing them a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

See the full statement below:

PRESS STATEMENT

FG DECLARES DECEMBER 25, 26, 2025 AND JANUARY 1, 2026 PUBLIC HOLIDAYS TO MARK CHRISTMAS, BOXING DAY AND NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS

The Federal Government has declared Thursday, 25th December 2025; Friday, 26th December 2025; and Thursday, 1st January 2026 as public holidays to mark the Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year celebrations respectively.

READ ALSO:Full List: FG Releases Names Of 68 ambassadorial Nominees Sent To Senate For Confirmation

The Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, who made the declaration on behalf of the Federal Government, extended warm Christmas and New Year felicitations to Christians in Nigeria and across the world, as well as to all Nigerians as they celebrate the end of the year and the beginning of a new one.

Dr. Tunji-Ojo urged Christians to reflect on the virtues of love, peace, humility, and sacrifice as exemplified by the birth of Jesus Christ, noting that these values are critical to promoting unity, tolerance, and harmony in the nation.

The Minister further called on Nigerians, irrespective of religious or ethnic affiliation, to use the festive season to pray for the peace, security, and continued progress of the country, while supporting the Federal Government’s efforts towards national development and cohesion.

“The Christmas season and the New Year present an opportunity for Nigerians to strengthen the bonds of unity, show compassion to one another, and renew our collective commitment to nation-building,” the Minister stated.

Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo also enjoined citizens to remain law-abiding, security conscious, and moderate in their celebrations, while cooperating with security agencies to ensure a peaceful and safe festive period.

The Minister wishes all Nigerians a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

SIGNED

Dr. Magdalene Ajani

Permanent Secretary

Ministry of Interior

December 22, 2025.