INVADE AND DISPOSSESS

Did I not warn you not to go out

When I hear the python was coming to the East

for their pretended dance extravaganza

reminding you of July 29, 1966 and October 4, 1967

through to, and culminating in the Blackness of Darkness

visited the Asagbas, when Muhammad and Taiwo

instigated by the blood thirsty Haruna

planted the seed of jihad in the East

and lit the fire of Boko Haram?

But you would not listen to me

charging me of unsociability.

Brothers, sisters;

despite your recalcitrance and incorrigibility,

you may be consoled both the ringleader of that jihad

and his second-in-command received a reckoning

for their blood on February 13 of 1976.

And so soon, you have also forgotten Odi and Zaki Biam

and Benue’s sorrow.

Did I not also let it beknown to you, compatriots

that after that second revenge mission to the East,

that the python thence forward would become more vicious

since its head was not chopped off by the five Majors?

Also, did I not warn you to be wary of Jack the Prayerful

And his gibberish “No victor, No vanquish” balderdash?

making you to be aware, compatriots

that such Jackian platitude and *bugubugu

were all a ruse and not from the heart?

But here now comes a reckoning

for your stiff-neckedness, crass ignorance and incorrigibility

as with their platitudes and so-called handshakes across the Niger,

they have now taken over your ancestral lands and their shrines,

thereby desecrating their final resting places in the process

and swarming them with their (cows) animals afterwards,

not taking thoughts for yourself,

your children, grandchildren, and children’s children.

Better stop wailing, brothers and sisters,

because your cries to them and their cousins from the far-off East

are the wailings of dogs and baboons!

And the blood of your men and women gushing out of their bodies

together with the littered carcasses of unborn infants

from the disembowelled bellies of pregnant women

forcing out foetuses to be sold to marabous

in Chad and Niger, in Northern Cameroon and Sudan

are to them similarly, blood of dogs and baboons.

And your unborn infants to them money factory

and sources of their sexual virility

for them to bring more bastards into the world

to rule the streets of the nation and the world,

doing unspeakable violence and sorrows

through the strapping and detonation of bombs,

whilst calling on their deaf god.

Look all over, brothers, sisters;

Look all over,

They have let loose their gods of war

on the republic and its streets

just as the whole land has now been encircled

with their poisonous scorpions and vipers,

the streets are full of monsters and beasts,

sitting atop mortars and tanks with reddish and fierce-looking eyes

to keep all honest and toiling compatriots in trepidation

as their Alsatian dogs and lions, and tigers and wolves

and cheetahs and sharks prowl about the place in search of preys

and unleashing upon us and our children darker days,

and plunging the republic into another Blackness of Darkness

and in that blackness with 1966, 1983 through ‘85, 1993, and 2019

silhouetted in its bowel.

But did I,

did I not warn you

a nomad is a nomad;

a herder is a herder;

a badawi is a badawi;

a hadir is a hadir;

a badiyah dweller is a badiyah dweller;

and an Arab, Arab;

a jihadist is a jihadist;

a mujaheed, a mujaheed,

just as a tiger is a tiger;

a viper is a viper;

a boa constrictor is a boa constrictor;

a lion is a lion;

a bear is a bear;

a cheetah, a cheetah;

a wolf is a wolf;

a shark is a shark;

a crocodile is a crocodile;

a monster is a monster;

a beast is a beast;

Again, did or did I not warn you that a cow is a cow?

And a python is a python, whether he dances

Or recoils sleeping in the bowel of the rainforest,

having swallowed up many indigenous people, pens and agbadas?

 

ODEY OKABO OBOYA ADUMA

British Chevening Scholar

ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM.

 

*Bugubugu – (Yala, for blindman’s game).

Agbada – Nigeria’s national dress.

Agbadas – A reference to the politicians in Nigeria, for they are, who mostly wear the national dress.

 

Jack – a name given to Nigeria’s former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon by a British military officer at Sandhurst because he could not pronounce his first name – “Yakubu”.

 

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