You had to wake up super early; that is if you got to sleep at all! If you were fortunate to be one of those representing your school at Tafawa Balewa Square or National Stadium then butterflies must have kept you awake... Staring intermittently at your sparkling gator'd uniform, over bleached if not newly bought stockings and brown leather sandals or canvas.
In your head you went over and over the drills, stopping always at, Salute! Eyes right!
I can't recollect if rice and stew was very plenty but being selected to march past the highly exalted governor was much more than all else. That was in the days when governors weren't known as rascals or rogues.
It was an annual tradition I looked forward to long before I was old enough to be selected. When I became of age, even my knock knees were not conspicuous enough to stand in my way.
Fast forward to yesterday when the children got home excitedly to announce they would be on midterm because of Children's Day!
If the government decided to ferry them home and parents are hard wired to be at work then who is celebrating Children's Day for our priced precious ones!
Perhaps grandmas and grandpas; if the Nigerian factor is yet to stuff life out of them. Or house helps and drivers whose value for these lives may be as good as the way madam and oga treats them with disdain or worst still their depraved minds which only sees these children as objects to be molested just because their forbears are privileged.
It has come to a time when we must rethink commemorative events. If it is Children's Day declared by the government then the government - local, state and federal must have activities that can occupy them all day. If it is just a noted day, then it should be a national holiday so that parents and guardians can truly spend the day with their children.
Just one day in an entire year and we choose to play yoyo so much so that corporate bodies are gradually editing out the day from their calendar to win mileage on earnings.
Perhaps it could be a day when all parents go to work with their children while the management show them around and "spoil" them with gifts thereafter so that at such a tender age they place value on hard work and see part of the reasons their parents leave home for daily bread.
To the children in Nigeria who have the luxury of celebrating this day of my birth, HAPPY CHILDREN's DAY
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