Welcoming Eid el-Fitr

Also published in DAILY TRUST

 

The rate at which time flies nowadays is phenomenal, and it challenges us to set and pursue our order of priorities diligently and appropriately. The euphoria of welcoming the month of Ramadan has hardly died down when we begin to bid it farewell and welcome Eid el-Fitr (Sallah), which we look forward to celebrating tomorrow or the day after tomorrow as the case may be.

Interestingly, Eid in Nigeria inspires such a unique excitement, which surpasses what is obtained even in the countries regarded as the cradle of Islam; the rich Arabian Gulf countries.

Perhaps it is the intense pressure the average Nigerians go through in order to secure and provide Eid related stuff and services to themselves and their dependents that provides the Eid atmosphere with such an exuberant pulse that inspires tremendous enthusiasm for it.

For instance, the stress associated with the hustle and bustle to secure the means to provide kayan sallah, tuwon sallah and indeed some cash for yawon Sallah and other Eid-related activities is so enormous that the joy of a person who manages to secure such things in time extends into the Eid days and gives the event such a special taste of joy.

By the way, it is really pathetic that an average Nigerian Muslim has become so poor to the extent that he merely looks forward to celebrating the Eid in terms of enjoying some relatively better quality foods and wearing some new clothes, which he ordinarily only dreams of.

This explains his apparent high consumption of the rare and relatively abundant delicacies available during the Eid festivities. For instance, he consumes a lot of meat, particularly during the Eid el-Adha when meat is relatively easily accessible, apparently to quench his burning appetite for it once and for all, as a result of which he upsets his stomach and ends up with diarrhea and other stomach-related illnesses.

Incidentally, hardly anybody raises alarm over this annual predictable endemic diarrhea amongst many people much less take any precautionary measures. In many places, though, towards the Eid el-Adha in particular, demand for dates and kanwa increases dramatically on the assumption that they cure or perhaps prevent diarrhea, which many people deliberately brace up to suffer as a result of such high and sometimes reckless intake of meat within a short period of time.

However, while the poor Nigerian chap regards such things as rare luxuries, his counterpart in the rich Arabian Gulf doesn’t have that level of joy during Eid because he is not looking forward to enjoying anything he has taken for granted, which further explains the relative dullness of the Eid in this region compared with countries like Nigeria.

This is in spite of the enormous challenges associated with the preparation for the festivities in Nigeria. For instance, tailors, who are notorious for breaking promises, deprive many people of the joy of wearing their kayan sallah, which inevitably affects their sense of excitement during the festivities.

Unfortunately, this year’s Eid will be particularly unexciting to many people due to two prevailing phenomena; one of which is natural and the other is largely leadership-inflicted. The natural one is, of course, the current climatic condition which has already caused floods in many areas, while the leadership-inflicted is the persistent deterioration of security situation in the country, which, for instance, is presumably the real reason behind the suspension of the grand durbar festivities in Kano by the state’s emirate council.

Although Eid el-Fitr is called Karamar Sallah suggesting that it is less significant than Eid el-Adha (Babbar Sallah), the former inspires more enthusiasm than the latter. This is quite understandable because Eid el-Fitr falls after nine months from the last Eid occasion while Eid el-Adha falls just a little over two months from marking the Eid el-Fitr. Also, Eid el-Fitr is immediately preceded by Ramadan fasting of one full month, the ending of which attracts celebration.

Ironically, however, despite the festive mood and celebratory atmosphere of Eid in Nigeria, there emerges an unnecessary wave of hunger of a sort as result of a self-inflicted food scarcity during the Eid days.

Although I don’t know what obtains elsewhere in the country, in my hometown of Kano and perhaps in the neighboring states, one can’t understand why, though so many households offer tuwon sallah, they hardly care to prepare any other meal for the rest of the day and perhaps for the next day. Instead they prefer to keep warming the same tuwon sallah repeatedly to have it for launch and for dinner as well.

It is quite funny and indeed ironic that even fairly well-to-do- people settle for some warmed or recycled tuwon sallah as lunch and dinner, after they had it fresh as breakfast.

It is even funnier on the following when they literally struggle to scavenge for whatever they could manage to get; and they would eventually settle for some generally low quality foods such as soaked gari with peanut which many of them would not ordinarily eat.

This phenomenon makes many people to become desperate during the first two days of the Eid and the struggle to satisfy the unnecessary hunger upsets their festive mood. However, the situation during Eid el-Adha is relatively better in view of the relative availability of meat, which people consume as meals while the Eid lasts.