As Nigerians Joined the World To Welcome 2023 With Prayers, Fanfare, Expectations
Nigerians across the country spent the night of December 31, 2022 waiting for the dawn of the day, January 1, 2023 ushering the new year with prayers, fireworks and loud cheers, and full expections for a better life in the country.
The Street Reporters Newspaper recalls that the past years have been with mixed feelings, and for majority of the masses, they were years of hunger and hardship since their hope of real change for the better almost eight years ago was dashed.
In the face of their pains, majority of the citizens dared to stepped into the New Year, saying farewell to chaotic 2022 economic atmosphere with hope of a better Nigeria, especially as the President Muhammadu Buhari administration winds down for a new government on My 29, 2023.
Channels Television reported that after two previous New Year crossovers under the cloud of COVID-19 restrictions, Nigerians trooped out en masse to places of worship where they spent the first moments of 2023 with loved ones and fellow worshippers.
Hundreds of others who did not make it to worship centres gathered at recreational centres to usher in the New Year.
Anticipation remains high for 2023 in the country with general elections scheduled to take place in February and March.
President Muhammadu Buhari shared in the anticipation, in his final presidential New Year message to Nigerians on Saturday.
He called on the citizenry to forge greater camaraderie among one another in the coming year, promising on his part to fulfill his promise of a free and fair elections.
“As we welcome the New Year, let us look with hope to 2023, a year to move forward as a Nation towards unity, progress and prosperity. I offer my own personal felicitations, mindful of the various opinions and interpretations of our executive legacies,” he said.
“I welcome and accept both the accolades and criticisms in equal measure secure in the conviction that I did my best to serve our dear country Nigeria and I pray that the next President will also pick up the baton and continue the race to make Nigeria one of the leading countries of the world by the end of this century.”
As the rest of the world’s eight billion people celebrate the New Year, Sydney was among the first major cities to ring in 2023, restaking its claim as the “New Year’s Eve capital of the world” after two years of lockdowns and coronavirus-muted festivities.
Australia’s borders have reopened and throngs of revellers gathered along Sydney’s sparkling harbour to watch 100,000 pyrotechnics light up the southern sky.
A crowd that had been projected to surpass one million watched as a spectacular 12-minute display showered the waterway and illuminated the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
“It’s been a fairly good year for us; getting past Covid of course is great,” David Hugh-Paterson, 52, told AFP as he waited in a growing crowd near the Sydney Opera House.
The federal government of Nigeria had declared Monday, January 2, 2023, as a holiday to mark New Year’s Day celebration.
The Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, who made the announcement in a statement by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Dr. Shuaib Belgore, urged Nigerians to make the best use of the festive period to pray for the total eradication of insecurity bedeviling the country.
In Abuja, the Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), The Street Reporters Newspaper reports that despite the rumours of plans of terror attacks in the federal capital, residents celebrated the new year with fireworks and fanfare.
Expectations are high across the country that the winner of the 2023 presidential election will tackle the country’s biting challenges headlong and boost the economy and manage the county’s heavy debt burden due to unbridled internal and external borrowings by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) administration.
