MY CO-TRAVELLER

A co-passenger he was.

In a bus with me

He sat,

Side by side

Along a route regular.

A happy one he seemed,

Singing tunes melodious.

Tunes from the mundane,

To the religious,

To the classics,

Even 'Ikwokilikwo'.

He sang and sang.

He hummed and hummed.

He whistled and whistled,

With body movement

In accompaniment.

His entire frame

Responding to sonorous tunes,

His right hand proximal to me

In rhythmic up and down movement

As if in obeisance to an unseen order.

He sang and sang!

His face a delight,

With joy

With sunshine;

Oblivious of the bumpy

Belly-holed highway

Begging for attention,

Creaking the bus,

Jolting the inmates…

Forcing out squeals

“Driver!”

“Softly!”

My co-traveller.

Ignorant of the cattle herd,

The sea of torsos,

Like a besieging army

Along the highways.

A menace to all

But the herdsman.

My entertainer

Unwary of

The gun-totting

War-geared guards.

Not at war, but at war

With innocent travellers

Ready to 'dash' them hot lead

For driver's obstinace to 

Release 'Roja', 'Egunje'

Ignorant he was

Of the 'government driver'

Racing as if to Lucifer's Lodge,

Disregarding traffic rules.

With reckless abandon

Zooming past

In nightish windscreen,

Shielding the occupant

From imaginary fiery foes,

From reality.

At a place appropriate,

He alighted.

(My musician, our entertainer)

To infect other mortals

With his music

With his sunshine.

My co-passenger.

THE POLICE

Dreaded like plague

In days gone,

“Call police!”

Scuttling legs

Each striving to

Outrun the other

For no one wishes

To incur the wrath

Of the police,

The wrath of gov'ment.

The police, with the

Baton as companion

'Olopa' to some compatriots.

The baton only!  

Except in crisis conditions,

In quelling upheavals-

A handiwork of politicians.

Politicians still cutting

Their teeth.

Infant politicians

Whose only weapon

Is violence.

Young, greenhorn Nigeria

It was.

Innocent.

Like a baby

Still suckling from the

Breast of mother Britain.

Learning to sit,

To crawl,

To stand

On the tripod

East, West, North

See him now.

The police.

Forty years and four after,

His companion! Monstrous gun!

Tear gas, bayonet.

Combat-ready

For the dregs of

The earth, the depraved.

Suspicious of the

Young adult male.

See him.

His hand thickened,

Caloused, like leather

Fit for Aba shoe works.

Thickened from carrying

Frightening fire-arms.

His cloak, weather-beaten

Begging for replacement

His shoes, like Abdul's

Of my primary school text.

Frightening fire-arm

Scarcely seen in

Stable, peaceful milieu

Where people's welfare

Is paramount to leaders

Not rulers.

Without bullet repellant

He stands out

Alert, unalert

To mount roadblocks,

To check.

“Wetin you carry?”

“Co-operate,”

“Settle”,

His creed.

He claims,

“Oga wey plant me here,

wey no say I dey here

Must get im own”.

Do you blame him?

The police

A clan loathsome to some,

Taking it for the

Uninformed, untuthored,

Unopportuned

Made for the last resorts,

The police,

Our police,

The best could be

Not without thorough

Screening, training.

A new orientation

A new consciousness

Their minds, bodies

Polish, shine.

Emolument, as massive as elephant,

Tempting.

Their abode

Finer than paradise,

For fine locale

Grand minds,

Opportunities breed.

Deprivation,

Frustration

Uneducation

Beget perversion

In all, “police is your friend.”

THE THIEF

“Hollam ! Hollam! H-o-l-l-a-m!”

“He's a thief! A thief!”

“My traveling bag! My bag!”

The contents? - money

Documents - belongings

Dresses, shoes, ‘not imported’

From Aba, Balogun.

Books, by acclaimed authors,

Growing authors

To man, to posterity

Bequeath.

Hei! My pencil,

My eye pencil

“Hollam!” “Thief!”

Like a hawk after a prey,

After a chick

The hen, its brood to deprive

“Gwam!”

The thief, my bag

From my clutch severes

“Catcham!”

He must be caught

To face judgement,

For ‘thiefing,’

For causing anguish

To his victim.

He must languish in

Four walls of ‘Kirikiri’

But:

The thief, the rogue, the robber,

Is he alone in his thiefery,

His roguery, his robbery?

Education says

A thief steals without violence,

With force,

Stealthily.

The thief,

Many of us have become!

The man-in-charge

The woman-in-charge

Denying the worker his wage,

The pensioner his pension

And fixes the dough

To acquire secondary thickening;

Boosting the moon-shaped face,

Bulging belly,

Hoarse-turned voice from

Excess fat along speech track,

Countrymen and women

Wallow in sorrow,

Languish in want,

Live like walking ghosts,

‘Die in instalments’.

The thief’s wealth

Soars and soars

Re-surfacing in foreign accounts.

From Cape to Cairo,

Boston to Buenos Aires,

Peking to Puerto Rico.

The rogue in us rob

The nation and its fragments

Of trillions, billions,

Millions, thousands of naira

Stacking them to swell, to smell

In vaults

While the nation

Like wasteland

Desolate, traumatized

Remains.

Devoid of the gold

The jewel with which

To grow like those economies,

Those vaults swollen,

Pregnant with the thiefed cowries.

HE RED CAP

T

he Red cap

Of ancient days,

Revered.

A symbol of unity,

Authority

Among my kind.

The crown whose

Wearer’s ‘aye’ is ‘aye’,

‘Nay’, ‘nay’.

Unwavering,

By his words he

Stands,

Blind to dainty carrots

Dangled before him

Ceaselessly

Like the apple

Before Eve dangled

Causing the FALL-

The fall of man.

The red cap

Of the present

Remains

The Red cap,

As constant as

The Northern star

If the head

Is unseduced, unscathed

By JUICES.

 The good fight you have

 Fought ‘with all your might’.

 The fight, with profundity

 You have fought;

 To be a model of parenthood,

 A model of spousehood,

 The best in creation.

 Yourself, nature’s cynosure,

 Like the Creator, planting

 Smiles on faces forlorn,

 Placing hopes on hopeless hearts

 A creature-turned creator

 You are, BUK

 Unnumbered works that warm

 The hearts that frees the mind

 Of impurities, of life’s stresses!

 All beauties to behold!

 Art Galleries, libraries, public

 Areas, your handiwork adorn.

 Your life we celebrate, BUK;

 For like the firmaments have

 Immortal become; smiling, over the

 Frailty of man, the malevolence

 Of man; praying that HE

 Forgives them “For they know

 All, thank HIM for Boniface,

 For the gift of life,

 For the gift of peace

 For the gift of love

 Which BUK portrays.

 Sun has risen at dusk.

JUDAS ISCARIOT

Do you blame him

For betraying Christ?

Your sympathy, he

Deserves!

Pity!

For fate,

Like Oedipus,

Chose him

For a role sordid.

To escape it?

He could not have

For destiny has

Ruled.

Has like the Judge,

Hit the gabble on

The table to pronounce

FINALITY!

Destiny,

Man cannot control;

Cannot escape from

Like Jonah sought to

Escape Nineveh

But was forced to

Make a U-turn

Through the belly

Of the fish.

His name to many -

Abomination!

Accursed!

Sacrificial Judas.

LEADERSHIP

As a mother,

The needs of the

Child anticipates

And satisfies,

So a leader

Bubbles with the

Desire to make

Life ‘more abundant’

For the led.

A leader is not

A ruler that governs

But a shepherd that

Leads the sheep to

Pasture.

There is honour in

Service.

Divine duty

Leadership is,

To guide man

To higher services.

STIGMATIZATION

‘‘Did I hear you say

Stig-ma-ti-za-tion?’’

“‘Yes, for that is the word”

The description of the monster

That like Colossus

‘Bestrides the narrow world’

And mortals like underlings

Cower, shiver, and shrivel.

The description of the state

Of agony, of mental torture

Of suffering sublime

That like a mirror

Forever stares the victim

In the face,

The victim of HEICH-AI-VEE

Stigmatized, deserted

By all, but his mother

Her mother;

For mother’s love like

The love of Jehovah

All surpasses.

Weep not for him,

For her;

For life goes on -

Vibrant life, of

Full fulfillment, yet to come

For with HEICH-AI-VEE

All is not lost

All remains, still.

With consideration, love,

Shower them.

It is they today,

Next day, another.

Food undernatured

Prefer,

Fruit, vegetable, water,

Stomach’s constant companion,

Inseparable, like David and Jonathan.

Like the farmer grows crops,

Cultivate the will-power

To live.

Working in the Lord’s

Vineyard,

Being a part of humanity,

Ploughing for man,

Ploughing for life.

Contact routes are legion.

With binoculars, do not

Perceive abstinence lack

For it is only one

Out of myriad.

A normal restrained life

Let them live,

For thousands ‘healthier’

Might hurry to the pit

Before them

You never know.

SALUTE TO WOMANHOOD

See them.

Hewers of wood,

Drawers of water,

On 911 trucks and trailers,

Exposed to the elements,

Some with grossly increased girth,

Some with life strapped at the back,

Some breast-feeding the life.       

En route destination,

Searching for almighty Naira

To sustain the family.

See them at construction sites.

They have become cranes.

They have turned to trolleys,

They have become forklifts,

Carrying plain sand.

Carrying sand mixed with cement

Carrying blocks, bricks

Transferring all from spot

To first floor, last floor.

On bare heads!

The head, which wears the crown

The head, the peak;

So that the family income

Will acquire secondary thickening.

See her,

In the scorching sun.

Walking the length and

Breath of the environ,

Her feet grumbling

Her footwear gaping in revolt

Wares, heavy on the head,

Child, heavy at the back.

A mobile advertiser

Shouting herself hoarse,

Begging buyers to rid her

Of the excess luggage.

Salute to our women!

For the hungry mouths must feed,

The curious minds must receive education,

Dependants must not die of want.

OCHICHI

            Ochichi, the spring; the

            Stream of my ancestors.

            The water that watered

            The clan and her seekers

            In the days of yore.

            Safely ensconced in

            The bowels of the hills

            Bordering Azu and Amawa,        

            Ochichi, like Mother Nature

            Spreads her tentacles

            Reaching out to her broods

            Far and wide.

            Ochichi, a source of cleanliness.

            A source of fulfillment.

            Exhausted from the day’s stress,

            Mankind allows the cool waters

            To caress the body, and the soul

            Thus arming them with vigour,   

            With calmness.

            Like the engine room,

            Like the fattening room,

            Ochichi transformed the cassava

            Tuber into cassava paste

            Half ready for the stomach;

            The bitterleaf, shedding its leafy cloak

            Of bitterness to become

            A tenant in the soup pot.

            Not a child’s play reaching Ochichi,          

            A long walk along snaky paths.

            The cool, untainted, fresh air,

            The ceaseless chirping of countless

            Birds, the croaking of frogs

            Announce the approaches of

            The village stream.        

            Her tasteless, sparkling, pure

            Water of life, Nature’s bounties;

            Not the ‘pure’ impure sachet

            Water of the New Age.

            As unwholesome as the hand,

            The heart that encased it.

            Ochichi, like the abandoned projects

            Dotting the landscape,

            Overthrown by the borehole and

            Its kind.

            Ochichi, rejected; forgotten.

            And now,

            Crocodiles and all,

            Like the colonists,