There is a strong and almost irresistible temptation to see history as nothing but the triumph of all that is negative. Pages of history are full of tragic events, and many are indices pointing in the direction of pessimism. Leaving peoples and nations helpless are challenges of national and international politics. Increasingly inclement is national and global economic climate. The weak are crushed and humiliated by the powerful. Needless wars are waged leaving trails of bloodshed, destruction and death. There is a huge deficit of justice. That is the state of our world in the year 2026.

It is in the midst of these unhappy indices that Christians celebrate at Easter their faith in the rising of Jesus Christ from death to life after his suffering, crucifixion and death. It is a feast with a message that many consider incredible. And that message is hope.

Faced with cruelty and injustice visited on the weak by the mighty in our world, Easter conveys the message that negativities do not have the last say. Those who wounded and murdered Jesus thought they had triumphed. Theirs was the logic of power, of command and control, the logic of might is right. They thought they had silenced him definitively. Easter’s message of hope, of Jesus rising to new life, unveils their error.

The message of Easter calls for realism. No responsible human being would fail to acknowledge the fact that human existence is a life and death struggle, an arena in which good and evil are in confrontation, a wrestling ring in which life and death are engaged in a strange and complicated combat.

This is the story of persons and nations. But if, as pessimists insist, every human being begins an inexorable match to the tomb as soon as he or she leaps out of the womb, and if the tomb is the final destination, then all that we go through in life would be nothing but tragic meaninglessness. On the contrary, the message of Easter, proclaimed and celebrated by Christians, is that, even as death radically contradicts life, life conquers death in the end.

The message of Easter is not denial of evil, but its acknowledgement as that which, in the end, will be conquered, that whose conquest has already begun. The negative things of life still remain with us: loneliness, diseases of all kinds, betrayal, wars, economic exploitation, hegemony of powerful individuals and nations. There is still a wide gap between expectation of succor and experience of discomfort. But Easter proclaims that a journey has already begun. It is the journey towards a life in which all that is negative in the present will be finally and decisively negated.

For Christians, Easter is the victory of Jesus Christ over betrayal, injustice, oppression of the innocent and the defenseless. These are the negativities of life over which he whom Christians proclaim as the Lord of life won a decisive victory. For he was betrayed and was unjustly condemned, he was abandoned, and he died lonely on the cross. Raised to life, his victory is the victory of all who identify with him in the struggle over injustice, falsehood and oppression. It is assurance of victory for all who are struggling to overcome the dominion of evil in our world, assurance of victory for all who would stand up for what is right, those who would take a stand against the cruelty, brutality and oppression visited on the weak by the mighty in our world and in our beloved country Nigeria.

Easter challenges and invites us to rise to higher realms in the way we do things. Easter challenges us as Nigerians to rise out of the tomb of ethnic, regional and religious bigotry in the graveyard of mediocrity, in the cemetery of things that have kept this country from taking her rightful place in the comity of nations. We and our leaders can do a lot better in running the affairs of this country. Easter is about renewal of life, and every election in the life of a country is an opportunity for the country to rise to new life. In less than a year, Nigerians shall be going to the polls. That is why the message of Easter is timely.

As the 2027 elections approach, we must with candor admit that our democracy is not in good health. It is sick unto death. The spate of defections by politicians of shifting party affiliations point to the descent of Nigeria into a one-party state, a state where divergent opinions are criminalized and punished in subtle and not so subtle ways, a land where one pays a prize for being different. Being clearly conveyed is the message that, in 2027,a country as diverse as Nigeria may be conducting an election in which alternative political options will not be available to those who desire it because opposition parties are weakened by a combination of externally and internally induced factors.

The National Assembly recently passed an electoral law whose provisions already forewarn us that we are about to conduct an election whose transparency will be in doubt. Its visible defects, which its potential beneficiaries are denying, as well as the posturing of our politicians in all the parties offer little or no hope. They point to a country in dire need of new life. It is increasingly doubtful that Nigeria will rise from the tomb of elections lacking in transparency, doubtful that we shall get it right this time around. But Easter offers hope that galvanizes.

Nigerians who accept this Easter message of hope must avoid the incivility of inter-ethnic profiling and insults such as what obtains on social media these days. We must learn to trade ideas and not insults. We must refrain from intolerance and demonization of those who hold divergent political views. On this feast of hope, we must resolve to talk with and not to one another, and with our lawmakers and other political actors, about how our country ought to be governed, not about how we want her governed, nursing the hope that we will not only hear, we will also listen to one another.