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Government Rich in Corruption

Be proud of your country and with a soft touch
Lift up her name;
Recite her anthem, rise on your feet and sing her praises.
These acts so patriotic of one; so promoting of a country,
But how proud can you be of a country which looks daggers at you?
How logical to defend her when in reality
You must defend yourself against her sword?
This story, this country, I swear to tell the truth.

A story of a withered tree West of Africa's great plains;
A story of deadwood from the colonial deceptive forest;
A story of a swamp where wild beasts from the West go hunting.
Its birth, an experimental retard of British colonial stunt,
At present, a haunted shadow of a fragmented nonentity!

A story of Nigeria, a story so gory, so revoltingly outrageous!
The government rich in corruption and very rich in callous lies,
At the top a president deeply unthinking, dying or dead,
Surrounded by politicians who neither think nor care nor see,
Like blood-sucking carnivores, they leech on the country
Until their eyes go dark and head quietly bow to the grip of death.
Then an army, torturing and killing anyone who dares to speak up.

O Nigeria! Oftentimes I wonder
Whether you are a country or an ancient hades, undoubtedly,
A barren land that swallows up its young,
Where sackcloths are trees blood their nutrients.
You made peace a foe and crisis a bosom friend,
Your streets a sea of coffins when tribal wars erupt,
Your roads are death traps your cities slaughterhouses.
The destiny of your young off you trade for a crucible of greed,

You have dealt good a twist and crowned evil a prince.
Your ravines and rivers are clusters of skulls and bones,
Carcasses of the prophets whose voices you stole and crushed,
Yet from their graveyards reverberate their songs of freedom, 
Their voices which then moved the mountains, now the sky make a bow,
Songs of freedom! Songs of liberation!
That triggers the heart to hope and the mind makes to visualize.

But then, again, I wonder what a nation this is.
Deep in this festering corruption, she so deeply lies,
Her nationhood alongside her decays and busts.
The hungry eyes of the poor steadily accuse her and with vengeance,
The rage of the martyrs stares down on her.
I would have wanted to think it differently, and perhaps see it differently,
But in view of these multitudes of tears, so profuse the urge, to tell the truth.

And from this sacred altar, here I speak, and humbly declare:
Break the chain, tear down this house, brinks of imperialism.
She should never have been born, this British experiment,
This Nigeria, which neither stands nor walks,
But tortures her children till every light is gone.
Now it falls, helplessly she twirls up in the air
Like a bird whose feathers are plucked off its back by the wind,
While in the morning, the pulse of freedom freely flows.

Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing stage: 
Content level: 
Not Explicit Content

Comments

Your comments never failed to lift up my spirit. I appreciate you a million times and more.

Bathe yourself with poetry and let the world go to pieces.

author comment

Hello, Chima,
So much more than a poem, here. Nothing to critique - much to absorb and feel.
Thank you,
L

Thank you so much. I was really moved to scribble this piece as a way of denouncing a really bad government.

Bathe yourself with poetry and let the world go to pieces.

author comment
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