Dear 2025, you are just 6 days old today. From the bottom of my heart, I warmly welcome you. Feel at home!
If you were a baby boy, you would be taken to church this Sunday for baptism. If you were a baby girl, you would be taken to church on the second Sunday for baptism. There you would receive a Christian name. If a baby boy, what would your Christian name be? Abraham, Elijah, Peter, Moses, Joshua, Daniel, Solomon, Simon, Joseph? If a baby girl, would your Christian name be Mary, Martha, Elizabeth, Rebecca, Deborah, Anna, Monica, or Grace? Like Moses 2025 or Rebecca 2025, I can’t imagine how faithful you would grow up in a year of expected improved standards of living in South Sudan and beyond.
2024 was not a bad year either. We survived it, though we survived it with multiple injuries, ranging from wagelessness, hunger, communal clashes, road ambushes and killings, cattle raids, robberies, corruption, tribalism, joblessness, subversive politics, differences among army Generals, rumours of regime change and above all, bad governance. As 2025 begins, a lot of things are expected to improve. Such things to improve are service delivery, implementation of the revitalized peace agreement, agriculture, healthcare system, education, international ties, aviation, army and generally, governance. Even if it means improving standards of living by uprooting the current regime and installing the new regime, it would sound much better than any improvement ever.
You are a good year, 2025, aren’t you? Make anything needful for the suffering citizens of South Sudan. For the whole of 2024, the salaries of the civil servants and soldiers went missing and neither the presidency nor the Economic Cluster bothered to worry or attempted to solve the issue of salary delay. This tells the citizens of South Sudan that the RT-GoNU is either a government of specific individuals or a government of NATIONAL COMPENSATION. Dear 2025, they say “A tree that would yield best in future is known from its foliage”. Your foliage looks pretty good and yieldable despite the incapability of the incumbent leaders of South Sudan.
Rumours have been circulating that the president wants to nominate someone to succeed him, but from the look of things, the love of power in the president could not allow him to do that. The way I know it, it will be from power to the cemetery. But if politics is dynamic as many people acclaim it, I want him to nominate a successor who puts the interest of the citizens first before his. It is 6 years now since the economic crisis reached the threshold, but President Salva Kiir Mayardit seems not to be willing to control the crisis. All he does is collect oil and non-oil revenues and use them for his fruitless travels and incompetent five Vice Presidents. This is surely coming to an end this year.
Where are schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, railways, airports, and other services that put a country on the map of development? Oil money, if utilized well, is enough to pay the salaries for the civil servants and soldiers and develop South Sudan. Gold money, if used well, is enough to cater for peripheral development and future generations. The only development taking place is the renovation, expansion and building of new prison cells. Stop building barracks and begin building schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, railways, airports and orphanages. Stop arming the citizens with guns, and begin arming them with pens.
“Enough is enough”. 13 months of salary delay are enough! 2 extensions of general elections are enough? 11 years of war are enough! 13 years of poor healthcare, infrastructure, and education systems are enough! And generally, 13 years of unyielding independence are enough! It is time for service delivery to the people of South Sudan, and the year that has been longed for has finally arrived. Dear 2025, do not disappoint me. If you cannot uproot the incapacitated RT-GoNU, then weed it. Remove those who prosper at the expense of others and replace them with those who serve the interests of the citizens. In 2025, the citizens of South Sudan should bid farewell to all sorts of hardship. Independence is nothing, but a chance to live in a better life.
Thanks for reading “Sowing The Seed Of Truth.