Category: Niyi Osundare

You drove a sword through Friendship’s heart
Dumped Loyalty in an unmarked grave
And seized the throne with your blood-encrusted hands
And darkness fell on the Land of the Upright

Roadsides reeked with the stench of murdered voices
The Burkinabe danfa shriveled into a pall
You broadened your brief in the network of other tyrants
Your bloodline thick like a bastard plague

Practiced puppeteers extolled your dance
Fixed your vassal steps to the beat of their drum
As they pledged all power, all privilege
To the longevity of your rule

But you saw Sankara
In the air you breathed
In the water which whetted your thirst
In the interrogating mirror of the Burkinabe eye

You saw Sankara
In the rainbow which transgressed
The darkness of your sky
In every page of your trembling Bible

You are the three-penny coin
Tossed in the wind in the cannibal
Game of dispossessing masters

The laughing jackass
Who held down his brood
For the fury of the alien whip

(Continued next week)

Tell the wind

To lower its saddle

Jump right in

And ride the skies

Surprise your space

Swing swift and steady

Through the clamour of the clouds

Tease the moon, befriend the stars

Look to the east

And the rising sun

And the west’s vast valedictory

For its setting song

Look up and up

And comb the clouds

Any bearded Patriarch

And his rigid rules???

Then direct your gaze

To the world below

Its perilous promise

And amorphous beauty

Out-sing the proto-call

Of your dizzying heights

Invest your feet

In the divinity of the Earth

“We have a lot of insecurity in Nigeria. By road we are not safe. By train we are not safe”.

From a survivor of the Abuja-Kaduna Train bomb; Mon., March 28, 2022

Too many ills do a nation kill

Ills just as many as the corpses

That clutter every gutter

Of our callously mis-governed country

The roads are slaughter slabs

The rails only take us on terminal journeys

Every coach is a waiting coffin

The nation’s graveyards puke from unspeakable excess

“Bandits”, “terrorists”: a tardy government

Plays name-games while criminals

Rampage without restraint

Different name, same Nemesis

What do you call a nation

Where food is scarce

And peace is scarcer; where

Life sells at a thousand for one kobo?

Bandits raid the homestead

Bandits raid the streets

Bandits raid the schools

Bandits raid the temples

Bandits rack army barracks

Bandits pummel police stations. . . .

Our government fled long ago

Without leaving a forwarding address

Let us steal some moment

For a brief reflective silence

Think through the thicket

Of a wild and wasteful era

Unfazed by its fad

And ill-digested trends

Its superfluous non-entities

Its lack of depth and daring

The haste and hassle

Of our toeless steps

Our breathless boasts

Which surpass our brains

The world of like, unlike

Has roared to favour

To friend, unfriend

Have become mortal verbs

All in an instant

To swim and/or surge

Fast and furious and famous too

A digital delay is immediate death

The Cyber sky is clogged with stars

A mongrel madness with absent rules

Forum so free and infinitely precious

Its current use is a grand ab-use

Tere pampa tere pampa
Tere minnan minnan tere

Join me now
As we tell a story
Tell a story
Tell a story
Join me now
As we tell a story

Tere pampa tere pampa

Story, story about a nation
That lives by the river and dies of thirst
About a nation
About a nation
Story, story about a nation
That lives by the river and dies of thirst

Tere pampa tere pampa

This nation is awash with oil
But its pumps are dry
Dry, dry pumps
Dry, dry pumps
This nation is awash with oil
But its pumps are dry

Tere pampa tere pampa

It knows not what to do
With its copious crude
It never knows
It never knows
It knows not what to do
With its copious crude

Tere pampa tere pampa

A fool and its fortune
Are soon separated
Soon separated
Soon separated
A fool and his fortune
Are soon separated

Tere pampa tere pampa
Tere minnan minnan tere

In the Beginning was the Void

And the Void was Silence

And Silence spawned Seven Intimations

And Seven Mists, and the form-

Less Inarticulacies of errant Winds

The Sun knew not yet its sky

Earth was flat fare and liquid riddle

And the Universe quaked into Chaos;

From the liquid loins of the Wind

The Vowel was born

And the Vowel was all flesh, all flair

From the silent bone of the Mist

The Consonant erupted into being,

All hard, intemperately mute

And the Consonant quaked into the Vowel

And the Vowel melted into the Consonant

And the Syllable was born

*                       *                  *

And the Syllable begat the Word

And the Word begat the Phrase

And the Phase begat the Clause

And the Clause begat the Sentence

And the Sentence begat the Paragraph

And the Paragraph begat the Discourse

And the Discourse begat Meaning

And Meaning begat the Universe. . . .

(Cont. next Sunday)

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Our school-less children, foodless stomachs

Death-trap roads, crowded horse-spittles

Murderous bandits and their blatant terror

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Moribund refineries and their mortifying debts

Their viscous load no less crude than

The brains of those who control our fate

We the Nigerian people subsidize

The endless tales about humongous ‘landing costs’

Sponsored raids by untouchable smugglers

In this land where Thief is Chief and Law is lame

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Oil-Block magnates from Power-Block mafia

Who tip the scales from their golden bedrooms

And swim and splurge in unearned preferment

We the Nigerian people subsidize

The crimes of rulers who think less

Care less, love less, sin more; from whose

Thunderous prayers minarets tremble and spires fall

We the Nigerian people subsidize

The rampant CORRUPTION of our rulers

We the Nigerian people subsidize

Their fatal incompetence and prodigal greed