The Sunday News
THE festive season, a period usually associated with merry-making is once again upon us with a considerably number of places across the globe today celebrating Christmas Day.
This is the period where people gather at various spots to merry-make while others would be on the road travelling to either to different holiday resorts or to their rural homes to be with their loved ones.
While it is appropriate for people to enjoy themselves during this period, however, it should not be lost to us that if excitement is allowed to cloud reasoning and logic, the festive season can turn out to be a period of grief with lives lost through road traffic accidents or at merry-making social rendezvous where sporadic fights usually break-out. It is at these sites that people are maimed by fellow imbibers after taking one too many.
The police just recently warned that a majority of the country’s accidents are recorded especially on Friday nights and during the festive season. That is a very worrying trend.
It is against this background that we call on members of the public to exercise responsible behaviour either at social gatherings or on our roads to avoid carnage that has become a ritual over the years. The road traffic accidents have usually been attributed to motorists disregarding road regulations with reckless abandon, speeding and driving unroadworthy vehicles. This period is also filled with excitement associated with the festive mood where some individuals throw caution to the wind and indulge in some questionable behaviour devoid of Ubuntu. Such people become a menace to peace loving citizens going about their business.
We urge the police of keep a hawk’s eye and closely monitor such behaviour and quickly bring to book those found on the wrong side of the law. As for the motoring public the police should not hesitate in throwing those found driving under the heavy influence of alcohol to the cells and only release them when alcohol levels in their bodies have subsided.
We should not forget that the festive season is also a period of giving and those privileged enough should show their philanthropic hearts to the needy so that they bring cheer to their faces as well. Anyway it is in our nature as Africans that we are driven by the spirit of Ubuntu which some scholars describe as the capacity of the African culture to express compassion, reciprocity, humanity and mutuality in the interests of building and maintaining communities with mutual caring.
As African communities are renowned for their group solidarity we expect the same spirit to be pervasive in our communities today with families taking care of their not so fortunate neighbours and relatives. We are grateful to a number of corporates and individuals who have displayed the spirit of giving through donations which some have been captured by the Press while some have gone unreported. That is in line with the African way of doing things where solidarity is crucial and central to the survival of our communities.
