All hail NEPA Nigeria’s God of Darkness
The bond between Nigeria and Darkness
Only the drastic word can break.
One minute of flimsy flashes
Then, a thousand hours of lightless groping
Wingless fans mock our misery
From powerless ceilings
The aircon coughed into silence
Many unhappy seasons ago
Failing factories feed our hunger
Our laptops run on the heat
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From our feverish groins.
With the rays of the kindly moon
We pen the nation’s epics
While libraries and laboratories suffocate
In the lampless anguish of our benighted Academies.
So wonderfully endowed, we count our blessings
Halfway through the surgical task
A medieval darkness engulfs the theatre
The surgeon’s scalpel veers beyond the veins
Close by, reeking mortuaries with their restless doors
At our ultramodern airports
Darkness taxes faster
Than the speed of light: blind landing gambles
Announce the welcome to our Blackout Country
•Formerly published on July 7, 2024; compelled into re-use here by the persistence of the same Nigerian problem.
NEPA: National Electric Power Authority; now re-named Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN)